Memeorandum

January 31, 2007

Tim Russert is on deck in the Libby trial, so let's have some background.

Per the indictment, Libby falsely claimed that Tim Russert told him about Valerie Plame on July 10 or 11: Libby also was hearing this "as if for the very first time", since he had forgotten the earlier mention from Cheney:

20. On or about July 10, 2003, LIBBY spoke to NBC Washington Bureau
Chief Tim Russert to complain about press coverage of LIBBY by an MSNBC
reporter. LIBBY did not discuss Wilson's wife with Russert.

...

26. As part of the criminal investigation, LIBBY was
interviewed by Special Agents of the FBI on or about October 14 and
November 26, 2003, each time in the presence of his counsel. During
these interviews, LIBBY stated to FBI Special Agents that:

a.
During a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC News on July 10 or 11,
2003, Russert asked LIBBY if LIBBY was aware that Wilson's wife worked
for the CIA. LIBBY responded to Russert that he did not know that, and
Russert replied that all the reporters knew it. LIBBY was surprised by
this statement because, while speaking with Russert, LIBBY did not
recall that he previously had learned about Wilson's wife's employment
from the Vice President.

That leads to the following charges:

33. It was further part of the corrupt endeavor that at the
time defendant LIBBY made each of the above-described materially false
and intentionally misleading statements and representations to the
grand jury, LIBBY was aware that they were false, in that:

a. When LIBBY spoke with Tim Russert of NBC News on or about July 10, 2003:

i.
Russert did not ask LIBBY if LIBBY knew that Wilson's wife worked for
the CIA, nor did he tell LIBBY that all the reporters knew it; and

ii.
At the time of this conversation, LIBBY was well aware that Wilson's
wife worked at the CIA; in fact, LIBBY had participated in multiple
prior conversations concerning this topic, including on the following
occasions...

And let's include one more for a flavor of Libby's testimony:

THE GRAND JURY FURTHER CHARGES:

1. The Grand Jury realleges Paragraphs 1-30 of Count One as though fully set forth herein.

2. On or about March 5, 2004, in the District of Columbia,

I. LEWIS LIBBY, also known as "SCOOTER LIBBY,"

defendant
herein, having taken an oath to testify truthfully in a proceeding
before a grand jury of the United States, knowingly made a false
material declaration, in that he gave the following testimony regarding
a conversation that he represented he had with Tim Russert of NBC News,
on or about July 10, 2003 (underlined portions alleged as false):

.
. . . And then he said, you know, did you know that this -- excuse me,
did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA? And I was
a little taken aback by that. I remember being taken aback by it. And I
said -- he may have said a little more but that was -- he said that.
And I said, no, I don't know that. And I said, no, I don't know that
intentionally because I didn't want him to take anything I was saying
as in any way confirming what he said, because at that point in time I
did not recall that I had ever known, and I thought this is something
that he was telling me that I was first learning. And so I said, no, I
don't know that because I want to be very careful not to confirm it for
him, so that he didn't take my statement as confirmation for him.

Now,
I had said earlier in the conversation, which I omitted to tell you,
that this -- you know, as always, Tim, our discussion is off-the-record
if that's okay with you, and he said, that's fine. So then he said -- I
said -- he said, sorry -- he, Mr. Russert said to me, did you know that
Ambassador Wilson's wife, or his wife, works at the CIA? And I said,
no, I don't know that. And then he said, yeah -- yes, all the reporters
know it. And I said, again, I don't know that. I just wanted to be
clear that I wasn't confirming anything for him on this. And you know,
I was struck by what he was saying in that he thought it was an
important fact, but I didn't ask him anymore about it because I didn't
want to be digging in on him, and he then moved on and finished the
conversation, something like that.

3. In truth and fact, as LIBBY well knew when he gave this testimony, it was false in that:

a.
Russert did not ask LIBBY if LIBBY knew that Wilson's wife worked for
the CIA, nor did he tell LIBBY that all the reporters knew it; and

b. At the time of this conversation, LIBBY was well aware that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA;

Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that
conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA
operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby.
Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame's name and her role at
the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.

Obviously, Mr. Russert could have *HYPOTHETICALLY* said to Libby "All the reporters know that Wilson's wife is at the CIA and sent him on this trip" without being aware of her name or that she was an "operative". But did he?

MURRAY And the second
question is: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe
Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

MITCHELL: It
was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community
and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign
service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on
that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact
that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob
Novak wrote it.

Ms. Mitchell has since back-pedaled from that.

In addition Ari Fleischer told the court that on the morning of July 11 2003 he leaked the Plame news to John Dickerson (then of TIME) and David Gregory of NBC, Russert's subordinate in the Washington bureau.

So it may well be that two of Russert's subordinates had picked up on the Plame tidbit. Did they pass it on to Tim? This episode of "The Tim Russert Show", which aired immediately after the Libby indictment, looks like a group exercise in story-doctoring but it certainly suggests that the reporters would have shared news if they had it.

So why did Libby call Russert? A note was introduced in court today (we saw it but the jury perhaps never will) with media advice for Libby from Mary Matalin - she suggested Libby call Russert to complain about Chris Matthews' coverage of Wilson and the Niger trip. Russert has said that Libby called to complain about some NBC News coverage, but has not specified the complaint. Well, Libby did not call to vent about NBC's coverage of the Cheney's energy task force; he called to complain about their coverage of the Niger trip, which certainly improves the odds that the topic of who actually sent Joe Wilson came up. Michael Crowley and Jeralyn Merritt had picked out this July 8 Chris Matthews show as the likely object of Libby's ire; I had also suggested this July 9 episode, which features multiple uses of "behest".

And left unmentioned in Russert's testimony - Libby may also have launched into a tirade accusing Matthews of anti-semitism; Mickey Kaus broke this and provides a cogent discussion of the "anti-neocon=anti-Semite" meme that floated around for a while.

So - did Russert learn from Mitchell or Gregory that Wilson's wife was at the CIA? If so, Russert misled the grand jury and Fitzgerald's case will be taking on water. Strictly speaking, of course, even if Russert did tell Libby about Plame on the 11th, that can't explain how Libby was chatting about it with Miller on the 8th; however, if even Tim Russert could mislead a grand jury, what other reporters might also have done so?

Maybe (the defense will argue, and I am just thinking out loud) Libby's real "Reminder" was Andrea Mitchell in a phone call to Libby's house on July 6, following her guest-hosting of Meet The Press featuring her interview with Joe Wilson. Libby remembered the "Meet The Press" angle, figured it must have been Russert, checked the White House phone logs, saw he called Russert on the 10th, and back-fitted a story that defied space-time. Have Libby's home phone records for incoming calls been checked? And did Andrea Mitchell deny disclosing Plame to Libby - my impression from Well's opening statement (as well as her own ambiguous statements) is that she was never asked. In any case, that is just one hypothetical.

I expect the defense will hammer the "What did Russert know and when did he know it" angle. It appeared that Matt Cooper backed Ari Fleischer's claim to have leaked to Dickerson and Gregory, so the suspense mounts.

Wednesday was a good day for the Libby defense. Judy Miller, as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the AP’s Matt Apuzzo noted was not an all star witness for the prosecution. I don’t like ploughing a field that’s already been tilled and refer you again to my media bloggers association colleague, Rory O’Connor who has some good thumbnails on the last portion of her testimony (1, 2).

The most amusing witness of the trial was up today, the charming Matt Cooper who with his sloppy notes, shoddy journalism and wry humor brought the old play “Front Page” to life before our eyes. He is the sort of person it would be fun to have dinner with, not the sort of person whose news story should be taken as a bit of serious journalism

Cooper is one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses and surely by now even those who believed in the “Elliott Ness with a law degree” fluff about the prosecutor must be thinking more along the lines of “Get Smart”. In a brutally devastating but gentlemanly low key way the defense destroyed a key prosecution witness. The defense showed through an examination of the internal Time emails and documents that the story that brought Matt Cooper into this, “A War on Wilson?” was something concocted out of thin air.

Cooper’s notes showed he claimed as "confirmation" a minute’s long “off the record conversation”( something never to be considered confirmatory) in response to a question about Wilson’s wife playing a role in this Mission . Libby seems in fact—from Cooper’s own notes (haphazard and mistyped as they are) --to have said very much what he said he did: That he heard that too but didn’t even know if that was true.

“Has the Bush Administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium? Perhaps.”

This war as it turns out existed only in in Matt’s mind. Unless you consider efforts to respond to inquiries about Wilson's claims with the truth to be war or to be as Cooper does “dissing” or “disparaging” Wilson. It seems Libby engaged in perfectly appropriate conduct such as noting all the elements of Wilson's claim were false (Something the bi-partisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmed):Wilson was not sent at the “behest of the vice president; he did not refute, but rather supported, the existing intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger; his report never made it to the vice president.

But beyond that, we saw how to meet a pressing deadline while on a summer weekend's jaunt at a country club, Matt took a noncommittal off the record response from Libby, pretended Rove’s statement about Plame had been confirmed by Libby and that he had a third confirmation from his colleague Dickerson who still claims that despite what Fleischer testified to the other day, Fleischer did not tell him about Plame but merely said that if he wanted to know who sent Wilson to Africa he should ask the CIA.

Even better, the quote in the article’s account of Libby’s response to Cooper is not in his notes, wasn’t even in his first draft of the story. It was a revision suggested by someone higher up the food chain at the magazine. It clearly fit better into an account which without factual basis claimed there was a “War on Wilson”.

Cooper, in defense of this shoddy journalism (the phrase “watching sausage being made” was muttered in the media room and not by the bloggers) reminded us that “The headline ends in a question mark."

OK, Cooper is sidingwith Ari Fleischer and telling us that John Dickerson got a Plame leak from Ari Fleischer, contra his denials. Cool. That should mean that David Gregory did as well, so Tim Russert should be an even hotter ticket tomorrow. [Yet Clarice, sitting in front of Dickerson at the courtroom, says Dickerson stood by his denial. See UPDATE]

For background, here is some Matt Cooper material: "War on Wilson?" is the article (with John Dickerson) that earned Cooper his subpoenas; "What I Told The Grand Jury" (or here) is mostly about Cooper and Rove but there is some Libby material; and here is a transcript of his appearance to discuss his testimony with Tim Russert on Meet The Press (Possible title - See Ya in Court Someday).

On Meet The Press, Cooper did hint about additional sources:

MR. COOPER: Yes, those were among the sources for that, yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: Are there more?

MR. COOPER: I don't want to get into it, but it's possible.

MR. RUSSERT: Have you told the grand jury about that?

MR. COOPER: The grand jury knows what I know, yes.

MR. RUSSERT: That there may have been more sources?

MR. COOPER: Yes.

I guess we should take that to be Dickerson (I had poo-pooed Cooper's revelation and guessed it was Bill Harlow, press flack at the CIA).

And as an ironist's delight, and because this just isn't his day - here is John Dickerson explaining at length why it is not plausible that Karl Rove forgot his leak to Matt Cooper. We look forward to a follow-up on why it is entirely plausible that Matt Cooper and Ari Fleischer think John Dickerson had the Plame scoop, but Dickerson has "a different memory".

UPDATE: Let's have a Dickerson rally! if Matt Cooper can insist that folks are disparaging Wilson by daring to rebut him, he can jump to conclusions about what Dickerson was telling him, especially if he is typing away under deadline pressure.

So maybe Dickerson told Cooper that a government official had made it clear that Wilson had been sent by a low-level CIA type, and Cooper provided the rest based on his Rove tip.

But the obvious problem is this - Ari Fleischer also thinks he gave Dickerson the tip. So Fleischer thinks he gave Dickerson a confirm on the wife and Cooper thinks Dickerson gave him a confirm on the wife, but Dickerson does not believe he got a confirm on the wife? Possible! Maybe Dickerson relayed a phrase fraught with meaning to insiders Ari and Matt but cryptic to Dickerson. Maybe.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller acknowledged Wednesday that she had conversations with other government officials and could not be "absolutely, absolutely certain" that she first heard about an outed CIA official from I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby's attorneys seized on the hesitation and tried to portray Miller as someone who selectively remembers some conversations and not others.

Ms. Miller does have an extraordinary memory. She initially had no recollection at all of meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003, and told the grand jury that she believed she had only spoken with Libby's assistant. However, at the urging of Special Counsel Fitzgerald she looked for some June notebooks, and found them in a shopping bag under her desk. Lucky Day!

And these notebooks had a peculiar and selective quality - they were able to refresh her memory of her June 23 conversation with Libby to the extent that she was quite clear as to his demeanor (agitated and angry). Mysteriously, however, other entries in her notebook have absolutely no impact at all on her recollections - the notations for "Valery Flame" or Joe Wilson's phone number may as well be in ancient Sanskrit for all the meaning they now convey to her.

Oh, well. Her memory deficiencies may baffle the jury, raise questions about the thoroughness of Fitzgerald's investigations (Who were her other sources? Who cares!), or leave jurors wondering why only Libby's received an indictment for a bad memory.

But the gist of her story - Libby discussed Plame with her before he claims to have heard and absorbed it from Tim Russert on July 10 or 11 - remains as a problem for the defense.

MORE: Byron York describes Judy's travails and includes her own admission about her selective memory:

“Generally, I am note-driven,” Miller said. “And notes bring to mind a
memory, or they don’t. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t.”

It was just Fitzgerald's good luck that the Libby notes brought back memories, and just the defense's bad luck that the other notes did not.

The Times has coverage nearly as breathless as mine and uses the word "mistrial":

The day ended with an extraordinary argument by lawyers for both
sides, as well as a lawyer for Ms. Miller, over whether Mr. Jeffress
could ask her if she had other sources she spoke to about Ms. Wilson.
The question, which was left unresolved by Judge Reggie M. Walton until
Wednesday, threatened to derail the trial over the very constitutional
issue that saw Ms. Miller go to jail in 2005.

Judge Walton
seemed disinclined to allow questions about Ms. Miller’s other sources.
“I appreciate that there is an interest the media has in not having
questions asked that aren’t germane to this case,” he said. But if he
does allow them, and she refuses to answer, she could be held in
contempt once again and a mistrial could result.

The WaPo is more demure. And Jeralyn Merritt had an excellent summary at the Huffington Post and her site, TalkLeft. An excerpt:

Jeffress, being a skilled lawyer, began to test her credibility on
her note-triggered memories. And that's what brought the trial to a
standstill. She told him that she had no memory of discussing Valerie
Plame Wilson before her June 23 meeting with Libby. He introduces a
paragraph from an affidavit she signed, in which she mentions other
sources for information related to Wilson's July 6 New York Times
op-ed. Jeffress wants to know whether she can remember who those
sources were and if so, he's going to ask her to identify them. Sidebar
after sidebar results.

This isn't about the First Amendment, it's about Libby's right to
impeach Miller's credibility, Wells argues. Fitz says asking her about
sources related to the op-ed as opposed only to sources of information
about Valerie Plame Wilson and her employment is too broad and not
relevant to the case. Bennett weighs in. They go back and forth, and
I'm nodding my head in agreement with each of them as they argue
opposite sides. The Judge leans toward Fitz's position but is clearly
concerned about not wanting to infringe on Libby's 6th Amendment right
to confront and impeach Miller.

Judy by this time is clearly frustrated and anxious. She's
repeatedly sorting her bangs, blowing her nose and taking sips of
water. Finally, the Judge says he's going to sleep on it and he'll have
an answer in the morning.

It's going to be a long night for Judy Miller. In the end, I think
the Judge will split the baby, telling Jeffress he can ask about her
other sources for information about Joseph and Valerie Wilson, but not
other sources for the broader topic of everything in Wilson's July 6
oped.

What's the best that can happen for Libby? That the jury will
conclude Miller's memory is so unreliable and selective they can't
trust any of it. The worst? That some of the jurors will recognize
themselves in Judy's account of her note-triggered memory. I know I do.

Well - if we do reach a mistrial, you heard it here first.

MORE: if David Shuster also foresaw a mistrial, please don't even tell me. And has anyone seen David Gregory, and has he commented on his alleged role as a leak recipient? I'm also wondering if he has any tips for removing duct tape from the mouth - did he yank it quickly, go for the slow pull, soak it in water, or what? Or is he still, uhh, tied up?

January 30, 2007

Here we go, but let me clip in this cryptic quick and dirty summary of the Judy Miller problem, from the last thread. For background, here is Miller 1, 2, 3, from Marcy Wheeler.

Miller is being asked by the defense about other sources for Wilson and Plame news and claims she does not remember them. The defense wants to argue that:

1. IF she honestly to god has forgotten, then how credible is her memory of the Libby conversations?

2. IF she actually remembers but has claimed bad memory because she doesn't
want to reveal sources, then Libby is losing a chance to confront a key witness - her sources might include Powell, Armitage, Wilson, Rove...
who knows, except maybe Judy?

3. IF her memory improves with the use of her notebooks, then let her go home, look in her shopping bags, find the relevant notebooks, and answer the questions.

SO - Judge Walton wants to avoid Judy staging a First Amendment meltdown;
he also wants to avoid having Libby's people win an easy appeal.

And his choices seem to be:

1. Disallow the question - Libby will squawk;

2. Allow the question, threaten her with contempt - Fitzgerald will
squawk, because he sees this freight train coming - she will insist her
memory has failed, and advise him to put an egg in his shoe and beat it. Or, she will refuse to answer and go to jail again, probably causing a mistrial.

3. Some middle ground - Judge Walton will try to rule that Miller can assure the court she remembers
sources (thereby assuring us of her memory), but won't have to name them. This has the benefit of
assuring Walton a permanent gig on Comedy Central - c'mon, how is the
Libby team supposed to refute that sort of evidence? Maybe the Amazing Karnak can come on for the defense.

And last question - what is surprising about this? It was obvious that the defense would ask about Miler's other sources, and predictable that she would refuse to offer names. So why did Fitzgerald and Walton let it get this far, and why is Walton going home tonight to do the research that could have been done months ago?

I smell mistrial. I also think The Decider (aka, the 13th Juror, aka, George Bush) has seen enough, and Libby's pardon is now gift-wrapped.

UPDATE - WITH TIMES ON MY SIDE: In an unlikely alliance with Neil Lewis (buttressed by Scott Shane), I find the Times is with me regarding a mistrial:

The day ended with an extraordinary argument by lawyers for both
sides, as well as a lawyer for Ms. Miller, over whether Mr. Jeffress
could ask her if she had other sources she spoke to about Ms. Wilson.
The question, which was left unresolved by Judge Reggie M. Walton until
Wednesday, threatened to derail the trial over the very constitutional
issue that saw Ms. Miller go to jail in 2005.

Judge Walton
seemed disinclined to allow questions about Ms. Miller’s other sources.
“I appreciate that there is an interest the media has in not having
questions asked that aren’t germane to this case,” he said. But if he
does allow them, and she refuses to answer, she could be held in
contempt once again and a mistrial could result.

I imagine we will get a ruling from Walton this morning. My Bold Prediction - he will rule the question irrelevant and opt for the slow death of reversible error (if we ever get to the point where the defense is appealing the verdict) rather than the quick death of being forced to jail a star prosecution witness for contempt.

However, the defense should still be able to score points with such a ruling. Their presentation to the jury can be that Ms. Miller originally had no memory of the June 23 conversation; after being asked by Fitzgerald to check her notes for Libby-related conversations, she remembered his demeanor and that he was the first to mention Wilson's wife to her. Well then, the defense can ask, what else might Judy Miller remember if someone asked her to check her notebooks for all Plame-related conversations? The prosecutor has not asked her to do so, and the judge won't order her to do so, which means that "the truth" will not be uncovered and an innocent man may go to jail as a result. But for all we know, prior to June 23 Ms. Miller may have had a chat with Marc Grossman of the State Dept. in which he was the first to mention Wilson's wife to her - we don't know, and no one is making the effort to find out. This also ties in nicely to the defense theme of a White House conspiracy to get Libby - who is Judy protecting (cue "Twilight Zone" music...).

As to substance - of course Miller's memory is relevant. And how can it be that she has checked her notes and is sure that Libby made the first mention of Wilson's wife, yet she can't remember the names of the other parties to the conversations she (presumably) checked? Either she checked all of her notes, or she didn't. And since Fitzgerald wasn't asking about all of her notes, it is easy to believe that she hasn't checked them all; in fact, I presume her attorney would have advised her to not check them, then plead ignorance if the topic of other sources was broached, just as is happening here.

JUDY MILLER
The indictment counts –32and 33-- relating to Judy Miller do not charge perjury or false statements—only obstruction:
In the indictment Fitzgerald asserts that Libby claimed: "32(c) LIBBY advised Judith Miller of the New York Times on or about July 12, 2003 that he had heard that other reporters were saying that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but LIBBY did not know whether that assertion was true."(I have no recollection of the prosecution asking her this today.) and that "On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY informed reporter Judith Miller that Wilson's wife might work at a bureau of the CIA"
(If I recall today’s proceedings accurately,Miller testified that Libby said Wilson’s wife might work at a bureau, and she after some puzzlement took that to be a section of the CIA) and that" On or about July 8, 2003, LIBBY advised reporter Judith Miller of his belief that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA; "
and that
"33(c) LIBBY did not advise Judith Miller, on or about July 12, 2003, that LIBBY had heard other reporters were saying that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, nor did LIBBY advise her that LIBBY did not know whether this assertion was true;"
(I don’t recall this being asked on direct today)
Rory O’Connor has accurately described the direct testimony here: http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/?p=223
And the cross examination here: http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/?p=224
Miller had obviously prepped her testimony today with the prosecution and it was a startlingly different account than the "bafflegab" testimony earlier reported in pleadings and in her various accounts of that testimony. Like some other witnesses her memory is spotty on some critical issues, but like fine wine markedly has improved with age on others.
In the court’s media room where she is not a favorite her lapses inspired some snickers and Rory documents the more serious memory failures. Much of the afternoon was taken up with a dispute relating to the promise the prosecutor gave her when she agreed to testify that she would not have to name other sources. In the dispute leading up to her agreement to testify before the grand jury she filed an affidavit saying she had other sources besides Libby and had promised confidentiality to "one or more of them." When she agreed to testify after serving time in jail for contempt, Fitzgerald promised her that she would not have to name those other sources. Today she confirmed in her testimony that she did have other sources, that she was investigating the Wilson story before the Novak story was published and she confirmed that she had Wilson’s name, phone number and his extension in the steno book with the June 23 notes of the meeting, and that that information was there before her meeting with Libby.
At the grand jury, after being promised she wouldn’t have to name those sources, Fitzgerald asked her if she remembered those sources and she said she didn’t.
Today, the defense tried to explore the same matter with her—for impeachment purposes they said. Her attorney, Bob Bennett joined the prosecution and defense counsel in a long bench conference followed by further debate outside the jury’s presence and proffered as an officer of the court that his client has no recollection of who those sources are..
I have always considered the prosecution offer one which might well collide with the defendant’s right to a fair trial. The question, defense argues, is smaller. They want simply to put on the record that despite the affidavit, despite the long time in jail until she got that promise, she doesn’t
even know who the sources are, according to a proffer by her lawyer. The defense wants her to say that under oath. Will the court permit it? We should find out tomorrow. The judge wants to sleep on it.
Tom Maguire offers his pithy analysis on the judge’s dilemma:
[quote] Miller is being asked about other sources and claims she does not remember them. The defense wants to argue this:
1. IF she honestly to god has forgotten, then how credible is her memory of the Libby conversations?
2. IF she remembers but has claimed bad memory because she doesn't want to say, then Libby is losing a chance to confront a key witness - as noted, her sources might include Powell, Armitage, Wilson, Rove... who knows, except maybe Judy?
SO - Walton wants to avoid Judy staging a First Amendment meltdown; he also wants to avoid having Libby's people win an easy appeal.
And his choices seem to be:
1. Disallow the question - Libby will squawk;
2. Allow the question, threaten her with contempt -
Fitzgerald will squawk, because he sees this freight train coming - she will insist her memory has failed, and advise him to put an egg in his shoe and beat it.
3. Some middle ground - She can assure the court she remembers sources, but won't have to name them. This has the added benefit of assuring Walton a permanent gig on Comedy Central - c'mon, how is the Libby team supposed to refute that?
I welcome suggestions here
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2007/01/david_gregory_w.html#comment-28483229
January 30, 200

Ari Fleischer testified yesterday that he leaked the Plame news to three reporters - John Dickerson, formerly of TIME and now with Slate; David Gregory of NBC; and Tamara Lipper, formerly of Newsweek and now with the FCC (I think - how many Tamara Lippers with a press background are in DC, anyway?).

This situation is fraught since John Dickerson is a former colleage of imminent prosecution witness Matt Cooper, and David Gregory is a current colleague of imminent prosecution witness Tim Russert.

Interesting. Perhaps the NBC lawyers have duct-taped Mr. Gregory, pending Tim Russert's testimony. Perhaps the Slate lawyers have released Mr. Dickerson, figuring that if TIME has a problem, so what?

And might Gregory have a different tale from Dickerson? Well, per this Dickerson account, there was a lot of coming and going by the reporters and government officials; we are talking about the President's trip to Africa, not a formal press conference.

And, as noted earlier, Libby himself apparently over-confessed, telling Fitzgerald that he had leaked about Plame to Glenn Kessler of the WaPo (Kessler denied it, and Fitzgerald believed him.)

I think the public would love to hear from David Gregory. Tamara Lipper, too, and as a press spokesperson she ought to be reachable. Well, maybe.

MORE: Who watched the NBC News last night (check it out here!)? I love him, but... this Brian Williams blog coverage is simply not acceptable, except perhaps in a tap-dancing instructional video. He talks about Fleischer's testimony with no mention of David Gregory, and includes this:

At the crux of it is a very simple question: How did Scooter learn that
the writer of a newspaper opinion piece was married to an undercover
CIA employee? Scooter contends he learned from a journalist. Others
contend that he learned the information independently, from within the
government, and tried to pass it on to reporters.

"The journalist" has a name, and that name is Tim Russert of NBC. Grr.

FROM NBC NEWS: Having watched the video clip, they do not mention Tim Russert, telling us that Libby claimed to have learned about Plame "from reporters". However, they do give us a shot of David Gregory and explain that Ari named him as a leak recipient. Pretty cryptic.

A long day as Wells establishes that the original demand for documents sent by David Swartz on 10/03/03(the day Armitage confessed to the DOJ officials) specified the inquiry related to leaks of classified info to Novak per his 7/14 story and Newsday per its 7/21 story and there is no reason to believe Libby got any subsequent requests.

He seems to be establishing that when Libby told Addington that "he didn't do 'it'" "It" surely referred to what he knew DoJ was looking at.

Compter glitches have cut out some of my posts so pardon any omission..

Last night we had a flurry of excitement, since extinguished, because not all the reporters/bloggers caught Addington testifying that Libby asked about CIA trips involving a spouse.

Today, we are excited again - apparently Addington did not mention a spouse in his first FBI interview either.

In any case, Fitzgerald was not impressive in dating the Libby-Addington conversation. Addington claims it was after the Wislon op-ed on July 6 but before the aircraft carrier christening on Saturday, July 12. Great, but Libby claims that Russert sparked his memory on July 10 or 11, so there is not necessarily an inconsistency there.

Judy Miller is on deck in the Libby trial, so what are we looking for?

Her account of her grand jury testimony is here (and Judge Walton assured the defense it jibed with her actual testimony); the key prosecution points appear in the indictment:

14. On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter
Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and
disparaged what he termed "selective leaking" by the CIA concerning
intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA's handling of Wilson's trip
to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson's wife might work at a bureau
of the CIA.

...17. On or about the morning of July 8, 2003, LIBBY met with New York
Times reporter Judith Miller. When the conversation turned to the
subject of Joseph Wilson, LIBBY asked that the information LIBBY
provided on the topic of Wilson be attributed to a "former Hill
staffer" rather than to a "senior administration official," as had been
the understanding with respect to other information that LIBBY provided
to Miller during this meeting. LIBBY thereafter discussed with Miller
Wilson's trip and criticized the CIA reporting concerning Wilson's
trip. During this discussion, LIBBY advised Miller of his belief that
Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

...24. On or about July 12, 2003, in the late afternoon, LIBBY spoke by
telephone with Judith Miller of the New York Times and discussed
Wilson's wife, and that she worked at the CIA.

Clearly the first two leaks by Libby to Miller are problematic for the defense, since it is Libby's contention that the Plame news only registered with him when he heard it "as if for the first time" from Tim Russert on July 10 or 11.

Some backstory - Special Counsel Fitzgerald kept Judy Miller in jail for 85 days to secure her testimony; he iswas also aggressively pursuing her testimony on an unrelated case, the Islamic Charities. My guess is that there is no love lost between them, and I look for Ms. Miller to put the "hostile" in hostile witness. Specifically, I think she will be vague where Fitzgerald would like her to be emphatic, and emphatic where he would like her to be vague. Just a guess based on channeling my own inner vengeful witch, but she may be a much better person than I.

The defense will make much of the fact that she appears to have discussed Ms. Plame with other sources as well as with Libby. Fitzgerald did not question her about this, as part of the deal that got her out of jail. She said this in her account:

Equally central to my decision [to testify] was Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. He
had declined to confine his questioning to the subject of Mr. Libby.
This meant I would have been unable to protect other confidential
sources who had provided information - unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his
wife - for articles published in The Times. Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald
agreed to limit his questioning.

The defense has agreed to nothing and may attempt some expansive questioning of Ms. Miller, although the judge may wonder as they wander.

Addington has no independent recollection of interview with FBI on Feb 2004..But the exhibit (D exh 178)shows that when he testifd about the meeting in July in the anteroom--He never used the term spouse or wife"

Addington turned over all exhibits he'd given to Alberto Gonzales who was then WH Counsel..Gonzales job was to protect the office of the president..Addington's to protect the officeof the veep.

Note GX 532--Addington reviewed it (Note from Cheney saying shouldn't sacrifice "staffer"--May have communicated with O'Donnelll aboout note--indicated he thought it was impt.

Top half seems to be in Libby's handwriting.Bottom in Cheney's--Cheney says "has to go out today--not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy (this pres --scratched out)

who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

From the rear this appears to be a very heated bench conference..(Dickerson is sitting behiknd me and I just heard him tell another reporter--obviously about Fleischer;s testimony that there was a time when Gregory and Fleischer were together on the trip outside his presence.I take it that's a suggestion Fleischer may still have told Gregory.)

Cross..Nothing unusual about the Libby conversation..Addington had worked at CIA..In addition to knowledge he had first hand, he knew what was in the subpoenaed documents and in the testimony of those interviewed by the FBI in his presence.

Was passenger on AF 1 on Julky 1 to Norfolk.

Testified from personal knowledge to FBI and GJ..At time he testified, he had more than personal knowedge--he knew what was in docs Libby provided under subpoena ane what others provided (docs and oral testimony)

Libby's handwriting difficulet to read--hundreds of pp of notes, read them all though Libby's handwriting hard to read.

One of Libby's notes which Addington reviewed before his OWN gj testimony (govt exh 104 and 104T(T is transliteration)

Addington back on stand..Testifying to a subpoena for documents..(Fitz is doing the questioning).Lists media names--(the entire gang)--OVP members were to provide docs responsive to inquiry.

Before investigation started (Sept 2003) Addington told Libby (as he'd told others) that whatever they told him there was no privilege and if they needed counsel with privilege they needed private counsel.

Libby said he didn't do "it"..no specification of "it".

Libby asked how one wouold know if someone was undercover at CIA.

Addington offered to obtain for Libby a copy of the IIPA.

Wells- reviews conversation--Addington confirms that he told Libby any conversation between them was not privileged

Until something happens, here's a post I did for the American Thinker respecting the Fleischer testimony yesterday:

January 30, 2007

Now Dickerson Knows How Libby Must Feel

Clarice FeldmanAt yesterday's hearing in the Libby Trial, Ari Fleischer testified under an immunity deal that he had eaten a lunch with Libby, who told him Mrs. Wilson worked at the CIA, that she played a role in sending her husband to Niger and the whole thing was "hush hush." Fleischer also testified that he told two reporters after hearing similar information from White House counsel Dan Bartlett, The names of the two reporters, David Gregory who works for Tim Russert's MSNBC and John Dickerson who once worked for Time and now works for Slate, were surprising because David Gregory seemed to deny knowledge of Plame before the Novak article and Dickerson had long ago written an account at complete odds with this version.

Dickerson quickly wrote of the experience of suddenly finding himself singled out in this way by a claim at utter odds with his contemporaneous recollection of the events:

So, how to explain Ari's testimony? I've covered him for 12 years, since I reported on tax policy and he was a spokesman for the Ways and Means committee, and he's never lied to me. Shaded, wiggled, and driven me around the bend with his spin, yes. (I wasn't a fan of his book, either.) But he never outright lied, and I don't see how it would be in his interest here. More likely, he admitted to prosecutors more than he may have actually done because better to err on the side of assuming he disclosed too much than assuming he gave over too little. (Emphasis supplied.)

How does Ari's testimony affect the perjury and obstruction of justice case against Libby? It certainly complicates it. For starters, when this piece appears, it may get me out of my press seat and into that uncomfortable little witness box. It hurts the prosecution if Ari admitted something he didn't do, because they're relying on his memory. Libby is on trial for saying he didn't know about Wilson's wife and that he learned it from NBC's Tim Russert. Fleischer contradicts that. He claims that Libby told him about Wilson's wife at a lunch in early July, long before Libby ever talked to Russert. If they can poke holes in Ari's recollection of what he told me, they can raise doubts about what Ari remembers Scooter telling him.

If Gregory and Dickerson take the stand and deny what Fleischer said, it will surely undermine his credibility. Dickerson denied the story absolutely. If he admitted it, his two written accounts would impeach that admission.

But if Gregory confirms the Fleischer account, it becomes harder to believe Russert's fuzzy denial that he had no knowledge of the Wilson-Plame-CIA account. Either way, flaws in Fitzgerald's case are exposed.

Before this is over the media may find they should have been more skeptical of Wilson's account and less delighted that a special prosecutor with no constraints whatsoever was appointed to handle this matter.

Ari testimony, 1 , 2, 3 from Marcy Wheeler - grimmer than I expected for Libby, since I had guessed the "hush-hush, on the qt" comment would be a general statement about the Wilson trip, not a specific comment about the wife.

Also, when did Libby find out her name was Valerie "Plame" [which is how Ari said Libby identified her, although he waffles on cross]? She was "Wilson" in the INR memo; Novak says he got it from "Who's Who", but he should not have passed that back to Rove or Libby by July 7.

My old stand-by guess - someone got tired or referring to "Wilson's wife" and looked her up themselves. But if Libby did that prior to July 7, his memory defense has a major problem. Same point if Libby was told that by someone (no one who has testified has called her "Plame", I don't think, but I welcome advice on this point.)

Well - we can see why the defense wants to paint the picture that Ari is part of a "Protect Karl, Dump Libby" cabal. And Ari Fleischer is describing an undocumented face to face meeting - he will never be tried for perjury if he is embellishing this story. Still, this is the better day for Fitzgerald that we had expected.

W If you look at talking points before and after there is no mention
of Mrs. Wilson. Is it fair to say that when the Novak article came
out, from your personal perspective that was not viewed as a big
article.

M It wasn't a huge revelation to me because I KNEW, I knew it was a big deal that he had disclosed it.

Wells sensibly moved on, but Fitzgerald did not come back to that on re-examination, which one might have expected. Is Fitzgerald asleep at his own trial, or was this some sort of misunderstanding? Frankly, (I paraphrase) "it wasn't a huge revelation because I knew it was a big deal" is not a phrase that makes a lot of sense to me.

But in a pinch, go to re-write: "It wasn't a huge revelation to me because I knew". And so she did - she already knew that Ms. Plame was at the CIA. Ms. Martin then follows with, "I knew that it was a big deal that he had disclosed it".

OK, how did she know it's a "big deal"? Does any of her testimony suggest that Harlow, or anyone, had warned her to keep this quiet?

Or was it a "big deal" that Novak had disclosed it because Novak was not on their target leak list and the wife was not one of their talking points, which meant (here comes the Big Deal!), that some other person or group was leaking their own story about the Wilson trip to the press. The implication would be that the message coordination had collapsed, and for a pressie, that is a big deal.

I'll stop now - as noted, this is the traditional open thread. But let me just say, the collapsed message coordination as the Big Deal is not a bad theory - hey, you try spinning this, uhh, stuff into something resembling non-stuff sometime.

UPDATE: Who ya gonna believe, Ari Fleischer or John Dickerson, then of TIME? Here is Mr. Fleischer (2):

P Were you in Uganda. Can you tell us if you had an occasion to talk to reporters by the side of the road.

Fl President walking toward second event. Meeting with young
children who were going to sing songs. A group of reporters on the side
of the road. I recall I said to these reporters, If you want to know
who sent Amb Wilson to Niger, it was his wife, she works there. Tamara
Lippert Newsweek, David Gregory and John Dickerson, Time Magazine.

My inbox was a mess. In the middle of it was an e-mail from Matt Cooper
telling me to call him from a land line when I had some privacy. At
some time after 1 p.m. his time, I called him. He told me that he had
talked to Karl Rove that morning and that Rove had given him the same
Wilson takedown I'd been getting in Uganda. But Matt had the one key
fact I didn't: Rove had said that Wilson's wife sent him.

But if Ari is accurate, not only did John Dickerson know about the wife, he knew (and called the Washington bureau, but they were all busy) before Cooper talked to Rove.

Well, if Ari was making stuff up, that would have been a helpful detail for Rove, anyway. And as Mr. Dickerson notes, Fitzgerald had made a hash of the timeline in his Jan 26, 2006 letter to the defense the President was in Uganda on July 11, and Uganda is ahead of Washington, time-wise.

And how does this affect Libby's prospects? Well, if Ari is lying, that probably helps Libby. Or, if Mr. Dickerson was not fully forthcoming in his public writings and not investigated by Fitzgerald, one might wonder what other reporters are also, ahh, being parsimonious with the truth.

Since this is the age of instant information, John Dickerson has posted his reply at Slate:

I have a different memory. My recollection is that during a presidential
trip to Africa in July 2003, Ari and another senior administration
official had given me only hints. They told me to go inquire about who
sent Wilson to Niger. As far as I can remember—and I am pretty sure I
would remember it—neither of them ever told me that Wilson's wife
worked at the CIA.

January 29, 2007

David Addington finally testifies, and I am baffled [but the fog clears a bit - see FINAL TENTATIVE RULING, below]. Here is the sneak preview of his evidence as depicted in the indictment:

18. Also on or about July 8, 2003, LIBBY met with the Counsel to the
Vice President in an anteroom outside the Vice President's Office.
During their brief conversation, LIBBY asked the Counsel to the Vice
President, in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the
CIA if an employee's spouse undertook an overseas trip.

That ties in to Cheney's scribbled note about the wife sending Wilson on a junket, and struck me as deeply problematical for Libby's team.

A [Libby] Asked [Addington] if someone worked at CIA, would there be records. Normal for
him to ask me bc he knew I worked at the CIA. Kind of paperwork would
depend on whether you were on the Operations or Analytical side. On
operational side, CIA officers are not just free to use whoever they
want, need to get approval, requesting permission to use someone, would
generate paperwork approval. On analytical side there'd be a letter of
instruction or contract. In any case, this is the govt, when you spend
money, there's a money trail. I did tell him also it had been 20 years
since I worked at the CIA.

F During this conversation did Libby ask why he was asking?

F Did he give you a name?

A No

However, Addington inferred the topic was Joe Wilson.

And my seemingly obvious point - when did Libby mention the wife, as stated in the indictment? As presented here, Libby might simply have been casting about for documentary evidence that it was the CIA, not the OVP, that sent Wilson to Niger - a piece of paper to shut up Chris Matthews, as it were.

Well, Fitzgerald was asking the questions and he did not follow up on this, or re-read Addington's grand jury testimony to him. I'm baffled. However... let's not rule out the possibility that Fitzgerald's fevered (or over-aggressive) imagination got the better of him back when he was preparing the indictment - for example, Edelman was panned as likely to be weak in my sneak preview, and apparently he won't be called at all (but was he mentioned in Fitzgerald's opening statement? Help Wanted!). Maybe Addington's actual testimony was also a bit different from what we saw in the indictment.

TRUST BUT VERIFY: Rory O'Connor, also live-blogging, has a similar account to Ms. Wheeler:

In the same time frame, Addington spoke with Libby about CIA
paperwork. “Would there be records at CIA if someone there sent a
person on a mission?” That would depend in part if the mission were
operational or not, says Addington. If so, there would be paperwork
approval of that. If the mission involved instead the non-operational,
analytical side, there would probably be a contract, and a money trail
or receipt for the use of the money. So it was likely there would be a
paper trail in any event. The conversation took place after Ambassador
Wilson appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

Prior to that conversation, Addington was not aware of Plame’s work for CIA. Nor did he learn of it from that conversation.

FINAL TENTATIVE RULING: We have been advised that the official transcript includes the word "spouse", and much thanks to all. Addington did mumble, or at least talk softly, but several sources (Bloomberg, David Corn, Jeralyn Merritt, Neil Lewis) noted a family tie in there.

W You testified yesterday that when Mr. Libby was asking you a
question about CIA paperwork involved wrt trip, Mr. Libby said what
would be involved if a spouse had been sent on a trip, by a CIA
employee.

Richard Schmitt of the LA Times covers the Libby trial and indulges a rich fantasy life to the benefit of the CIA and the detriment of I. Lewis Libby. However, his failure to examine a simple alternative hypothesis turns his piece into a comedy classic. His theme is that Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation was a deep, dark secret, but he fails to consider the possibility that it was simply not that big a deal. Here we go:

WASHINGTON — From their earliest days, U.S. intelligence agencies have
made it an article of faith to protect the identity of their secret
agents. And in 1982, following a rash of malicious exposures, the CIA
prevailed on Congress to make it a crime to knowingly disclose the
identity of such operatives.

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was
a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency
telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities
around the United States.

... Not all of the 2,653 employees whose names were produced by the Tribune
search are supposed to be working under cover. More than 160 are intelligence
analysts, an occupation that is not considered a covert position, and senior CIA
executives such as Tenet are included on the list.But an undisclosed number of those on the list--the CIA would not say how
many--are covert employees, and some are known to hold jobs that could make them
terrorist targets.

And from Mr. Gerecht:

Truth be told, however, the agency
doesn't care much at all about cover. Inside the CIA, serious case
officers have often looked with horror and mirth upon the pathetic
operational camouflage that is usually given to both "inside" officers
(operatives who carry official, usually diplomatic, cover) and
nonofficial-cover officers (the "NOC" cadre), who most often masquerade
as businessmen. Yet Langley tenaciously guards the cover myth--that
camouflage for case officers is of paramount importance to its
operations and the health of its operatives.

Mr. Schmitt is embracing the myth, since it helps his story line. Let's press on alongside him:

But last week, as former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby went
on trial in connection with the leak, it appeared that neither the CIA
nor some other intelligence community insiders were all that
tight-lipped about such supposedly sensitive matters.

When
it came to talking to outsiders, the agent's identity was often treated
as not much more than water-cooler dishing or cocktail party chatter.

...In theory, sensitive intelligence is highly compartmentalized and
shared only on a need-to-know basis with people who have been cleared
to receive it.

That was hardly the case with Plame.

So, Mr. Schmitt's theme is that Ms. Plame's classified status was sensitive and should have been highly compartmentalized, yet, incredibly and inexplicably, folks who should have known better blabbed about it casually.

I'm thinking hard here - is there any other possible explanation for all this casual chit-chat? Any theories at all? Here is a wild thought - Ms. Plame's CIA affiliation was just not that big a deal!

I know Mr. Schmitt will want to train his reporter's eye on that possibility, so here are a few leads. First, Mr. Schmitt gives us this from Richard Armitage, who leaked the Plame news to Bob Woodward and Bob Novak:

Armitage, an old hand at dealing with sensitive intelligence matters,
later told a friend that gabbing about Plame was "the dumbest thing
he'd ever done in his life."

"I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he says.

Ms. Plame presented herself casually at an inter-agency meeting, the INR fellow in attendance wrote up her presence casually, and it was presented casually in the memo Armitage read, after which he disclosed it casually. How about that.

As another example, CIA press spokesperson Bill Harlow mentioned Ms. Plame to Catherine Martin, his counterpart in Cheney's office, apparently in June 2003. Yet when Bob Novak asked about her in July, Harlow actually talked about her, then checked her status (yes, that sounds backwards to me, too). From the WaPo:

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and
confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak
back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and
that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak
directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

So Harlow had let a month go by without ever checking Ms. Plame's status, then talked about her with Novak, then decided to confirm her status. And even after Novak had the information, Harlow did not arrange for DCI George Tenet to call Novak or his editors to kill the story. Just by contrast, the NY Times editors were asked by the "senior administration officials" to sit on their NSA warrantless surveillance story. Dare we suggest that Harlow did not seem to be taking the Plame news particularly seriously?

One last example - Joe Wilson himself was apprised on July 8 that Bob Novak was aware that his wife was at the CIA. With his wife's clandestine career and the lives of CIA assets all over the world hanging by the most slender of threads, did Wilson respond by alerting his wife and the CIA press office? Not exactly - He called Eason Jordan, Novak's boss at CNN, then played telephone tag with Novak until the 10th (this is in Wilson's book). Following that, he alerted his wife. Does that make sense to anyone? Unless, of course, Wilson was not all that fussed about a possible Novak story naming his wife.

Well. The CIA did file a criminal referral, so perhaps the leak was serious after all. Or perhaps the CIA was simply playing "Gotcha" games with their White House overlords. We can refer Mr. Schmitt to Walter Pincus of the Wapo, who saw political opportunism rather than substance to the Plame case:

Pincus believes that the Bush administration acted obnoxiously when it
leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, but he has never been convinced by the
argument that the leaks violated the law. “I don’t think it was a
crime,” he says. “I think it got turned into a crime by the press, by
Joe” — Wilson — “by the Democrats. The New York Times kept running
editorials saying that it’s got to be investigated — never thinking
that it was going to turn around and bite them.”

Last gasp - a few weeks back we reprised the thoughts of Dana Priest about the harm done by the Plame leak. Here we go again:

Dana Priest: I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position.

That might be because, as Nick Kristof reported, Ms. Plame's clandestine career had been wound down after she was (potentially) outed by Aldrich Ames in the early 90's, and because she was in transition to an inter-agency liasion function.

I know Mr. Schmitt will want to examine the notion that people discussed Ms. Plame casually because there was no reason to pretend that her CIA affiliation was a great secret. His current story embraces the opposite idea.

The NY Times finally tackles the story of the "Halloween incident" in Long Beach California, where three young white women where assaulted and viciously beaten. From their archives, we see they have ducked this up to now; having taken it up, they are quite sensitive to the plight of the now-convicted teens:

LONG BEACH, Calif., Jan. 26 — A juvenile court judge found nine
black teenagers guilty Friday of beating three young white women with
pumpkins, newspapers and a skateboard last Halloween in an attack that
has shined a spotlight on racial tensions here.

In a packed
courtroom, the judge, Gibson W. Lee, announced felony assault
convictions against eight girls and one boy, ranging in age from 14 to
18, and the acquittal of one 12-year-old girl. Eight of the teenagers
were also convicted of hate crimes.

Frank Williams Jr., one of
the defense lawyers, said he was “disheartened, puzzled and
grief-stricken.” The verdicts will be appealed, he said, but he added
that he did not “have too much confidence in the justice of the appeal
system.”

The defendants’ parents said their children were denied
their rights, noting they have been in custody since their arrest on
Oct. 31. In California, there is no bail for juveniles.

Cherralle Hardison, the mother of the 12-year-old and three of the convicted teenagers, wept.

“My heart is heavy. It hurts to know your kids didn’t do anything and
you can’t do anything to help them,” said Ms. Hardison, 46. Outside the
courthouse, helicopters and a dozen satellite news trucks along with
the hundreds of defendants’ supporters awaited the verdicts in what has
become known here as “the Halloween incident.” Police officers, some in
riot gear, guarded the building and the fifth floor of the courthouse.

When
news of the verdicts made its way outside, the mostly African-American
crowd reacted with anger, some saying the convictions amounted to “mob
justice” and “a lynching.”

For those scoring at home, we are at paragraph seven with no reaction from the real victims, namely the three young women or their families. The Times finally notices them in paragraphs twelve to fourteen:

At a news conference last week, two of the victims, Laura Schneider
and Michelle Smith, both 19, described the assault and its aftermath.
Ms. Schneider has dropped out of school and a third victim, Loren
Hyman, 21, is awaiting surgery to repair 12 facial fractures.

Ms.
Smith said she thought Ms. Schneider was dead when she saw her
unconscious on the ground. “What would you think?” Ms. Smith said.

After
the verdicts, Doug Otto, a lawyer for the victims, said his clients
were relieved and looking forward to making their impact statements to
the judge. But, he said, “they are worried about their safety.”

The Times is awfully light on details of the case, but they do note this:

Defense lawyers did not dispute that the white women were attacked, but
they called it a “high school fight” that got out of control and said
911 callers indicated that the victims were being attacked by boys, not
girls.

I'll tell you what - here is the victims' account as told to Tracy Manzer on November 3. Judge for yourself as to whether this sounds like a "high school fight". And there is no question that there were girls among the attackers, although there is also little doubt that some of the males involved remain at large:

The suspects also began to gradually separate the girls, first by grabbing Laura by her long hair and yanking her backward.

She
said she tried to fight off a group of girls who surrounded her and
were clawing and hitting her, but then a man came up and slammed her in
the head with a skateboard, knocking her unconscious.

...Some of the 10 youths - nine girls and one boy ranging in age from 12
to 17 - were found wearing the victim's earrings - which were ripped
from their flesh - and had Lauren's cell phone.

The defense position seems to be that the convicted girls were at the scene but not involved - this is from the LA Times:

After the verdicts, families of the accused converged at a North Long
Beach church to address the media. They have said that their children
were present when the attack occurred but did not participate in the
beatings.

Quite an alibi.

BUT THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER SIDE - And here it is. The message would seem to be, mob violence is the safest violence, if you want to avoid prosecution - after the fact, sorting out who did what will be nearly impossible.

MORE: I am begging you, don't make an analogy to the Duke case; at Long Beach, it is at least clear that an assault occurred and that these girls were there when it happened.

In the wake of the first week of the Libby Trial, Patrick Fitzgerald's soufflé has turned into a pancake. Of course, if you are getting your news of the trial from the press you're certain to believe Libby is in trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reporting is as bad as I've ever seen (Matt Apuzzo of AP being the rare exception of a reporter who's getting it mostly right).

I don't have the official trial transcript but the Media Bloggers Association has had people in the media room reporting summaries of the proceeding on a live feed and so does Firedog Lake. Meanwhile, the regulars at Just One Minute have been commenting from an informed perspective providing a view of the trial at substantial odds with what has been presented by those who (for some reason we can't figure out) are getting paid for their work, which largely consists of a fantasy version of the event.

In this rogue's gallery, David Shuster of NBC makes it into the JOM spotlight twice; And Neil Lewis of the New York Times got star billing, as did the National Journal'sMurray Waas.

Newsweek's "Spikey" Isikoff filed too late to see his name in JOM's lights yet but he, too, deserves mention for a preposterously fantastical article on the trial. The article begins, "White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect" that Rove and Bartlett may testify. Isikoff is on the White House speed dial? He knows this how?

Only at the end of the article - the very last sentence -- is it clear this is all his fevered speculation that he's passed on at the beginning of the article as a factual assertion.

In the second paragraph, he mischaracterizes defense counsel Wells' argument saying it was that Libby "had been made a scapegoat" to protect Rove. Actually, Wells said that during the investigation Libby feared he was being scapegoated, not that, in fact, he was. (I think it may well be that his fear was based in part of something not yet revealed -- that the FBI agents doing the investigation mischaracterized to Libby and others what various people had said, probably in the hope of getting them to turn on each other. I think, in sum, the investigators lied to Libby as I believe they did to others.)

Another mischaracterization from Spikey:

"Libby is charged about when and from whom he learned about Plame."

Actually Libby's own admission to investigators from day one was that he learned this from Cheney in June, that it was not a significant fact to him at the time, and that he'd forgotten about this side matter until reporters called asking about it. Certainly, a reporter as intimately familiar with this case as Isikoff, who wrote a book about it, could do a better job on this basic fact.

Next utterly false "fact": Spikey says Wilson said there was nothing to the reports that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium in Niger.

We all know that is a lie. For one thing, the bi-partisan Congressional Committee investigating this said it was. Despite the restrictions on whom he could talk to (ex-officials), and what he was permitted to ask and the short length and nature of his "investigation", Wilson was told and reported back that there had been an Iraqi trade delegation to Niger and that it was believed they had been seeking to purchase uranium. Surely there was enough room in the article to tell readers that.

As to Rove's testimony, Spikey reports that Rove will testify that Libby told him on July 11 he learned of Plame and her role from Russert. That would, of course, seem to support Libby's contention that Russert told him. (Something in an odd formulation, hardly dispositive of the matter, Russert has publicly denied. That is, he says he didn't know her name and her job at the CIA. Of course, if Russert follows the pattern of the first four witnesses, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the prosecution's characterization of his testimony is as distorted as it has been of the first four prosecution witnesses.)

Spikey notes that,

"More than a half dozen officials have said they passed along the same information earlier than that."

Yeah, we heard four of them (Grossman, Grenier, Schmall and Martin) last week at the trial, and not one had a firm handle on when and where they told him, nor mentioned a reference longer than about 30 seconds. Fitzgerald's theory is that these remarks were so consequential Libby could not have forgotten this information. But the trial testimony shows this is preposterous and the prosecution's own witnesses have been demonstrating that claim is preposterous. In the process they have revealed

(a) they have substantial memory problems themselves; and

(b) the indictment and Fitzgerald press conference when he announced the indictment substantially overstated what these four witnesses had told the investigators and grand jury; and

(c) not a single witness believed the information about Plame was significant that early in time.

More fiction offered up as news: Spikey says Rove is "edgy" because after his conversation with Libby he told Cooper about Plame. He knows this, how? Oh dear.

Libby says he told Cooper, Cooper says HE told Libby. Rove says, I believe, that he may have told Cooper but forgot the entire conversation until a fellow Time staffer reminded his lawyer and some note was found to refresh his recollection. The judge has sent a strong signal that Cooper lied (ruling after reading his notes of his conversation with Libby that no matter how Cooper testifies his notes will impeach him). Rove must really be sweating this out - not.

Isikoff does remind us of something interesting. Ari Fleischer, who had an immunity deal negotiated by Williams and Connolly, had publicly said he wasn't even represented by a lawyer. (Who else said that? Armitage... the only other witness who appears to have been granted immunity - per the AP's Apuzzo - and the only other person known to have deliberately leaked the information about Plame.)

You can be sure that Fleischer's comment that he wasn't even represented by counsel will be used to impeach him at trial, and if it turns out that Apuzzo's hint that Armitage had a similar deal is true, Armitage's claim that he also had no counsel will be impeaching.

Spikey says Libby told Fleischer that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA and that was "hush hush". Having seen the mischaracterization of all the witness statements to date by the prosecution and the odd inferences drawn by the special prosecutor from them, I'll wait and see to what Fleischer actually testifies. My recollection is the hush hush was about other matters relating to the uranium in Africa tale, which was moving through the CIA declassification process at the speed of frozen molasses (because the agency was clearly trying to forestall further embarrassment that this nonsensical Mission to Africa was causing it).

Finally, Spikey says Fleischer then heard about Plame from Bartlett and passed it on to NBC's David Gregory. Last week during the trial, we learned for the very first time that Gregory who had earlier claimed "no one called him"-implying he'd received no information about Plame -- was leaked the information by Fleischer. There were a number of earlier reports that Fleischer saw the details about Plame in the INR which he was given while flying on Air Force One, and immediately told Gregory, who ever afterward pretended he never knew this and who was never questioned by the crack special prosecution team.

A friend with a long distinguished career in law enforcement also has looked at the Isikoff story and says of my analysis:

"Well, FWIW [for what it's worth], I think you're right all up and down the line. The mischaracterization of Libby's scapegoating concerns is laughable, but this (from the article) is precious:

Rove has said in secret testimony that, during a chat on July 11, 2003, Libby told him he learned about Plame's employment at the CIA from NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert, a legal source who asked not to be identified talking about grand jury matters told NEWSWEEK. If Rove repeats that story on the witness stand, it could back up Libby's core assertion that he honestly, if mistakenly, thought he had heard about Wilson's wife from the "Meet the Press" host ... [/quote]

"And what would be the reason that Rove would take an oath and then not repeat what he said to the Grand Jury? To show Libby that his scapegoating concerns were well founded? To give Fitz [Gerald] another shot at himself (Rove)? You can go to the bank on Rove repeating his G[rand] J[ury] testimony--and he won't just repeat his "story": Wells will make sure that the jury understands that the unindicted Rove said the same thing to the G[rand] J[ury], if at all possible. And that will be a BIG hit to the prosecution. If, as we and just about everyone else suspects, Russert will end up having to unpack his highly nuanced testimony, the perjury rap will collapse at that point.

"The scenario you sketch in #3[that whatever conversations in which Plame was mentioned in June to Libby were minor, of seconds' duration and utterly unmemorable] is coming through pretty clearly already--from the prosecution witnesses!

"I did not realize that Fleischer denied being represented, and I had taken Armitage's similar claim at face value--now I wonder. Can Fleischer's public statement in this respect be used to impeach him? The statement did concern the investigation. I say I took A[rmitage]'s claim at face value, only because when I heard it I thought that meant he received immediate assurances that he was safe. If he lied about that, too, and was going around trying to nobble witnesses to boot...." [Grossman testified that Armitage met with him before Grossman's first appearance before the grand jury and informed him he had been the leaker. Further he testified that he spoke to Armitage before all his discussions with investigators and the grand jury, setting up a strong implication that Armitage was trying to manipulate his testimony.]

With his own witnesses taking the air out of this thin case, the prosecutor's soufflé of an indictment has turned into a pancake when it came to trial.

January 28, 2007

So far the prosecution witnesses have been a bit of a bust for Special Counsel Fitzgerald - of Grossman, Grenier, Martin, and Schmall, only Cathie Martin has a credible memory of mentioning Wilson's wife to Libby, and, by her account, it was a twenty to thirty second interlude, she did not describe Libby reacting to the news, and Libby never mentioned Ms. Plame in her presence again.

This week an early prosecution offering will be Eric Edelman, who was working in Dick Cheney's office in 2003 as the Principal Deputy. Mr. Edelman will probably be a fizzle as well. He appears in the Libby indictment here:

12. On or about June 19, 2003, an article appeared in The New
Republic magazine online entitled "The First Casualty: The Selling of
the Iraq War." Among other things, the article questioned the "sixteen
words" and stated that following a request for information from the
Vice President, the CIA had asked an unnamed ambassador to travel to
Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had sought uranium from
Niger. The article included a quotation attributed to the unnamed
ambassador alleging that administration officials "knew the Niger story
was a flat-out lie." The article also was critical of how the
administration, including the Office of the Vice President, portrayed
intelligence concerning Iraqi capabilities with regard to weapons of
mass destruction, and accused the administration of suppressing dissent
from the intelligence agencies on this topic.

13.
Shortly after publication of the article in The New Republic, LIBBY
spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the
article. That official asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson's
trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the
Vice President had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that there would be
complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and
that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line.

Oooh! Libby knew he had some secret news - that could only be the tidbit about the wife, yes! Well, no - the whole Wilson trip and report was classified (although it was introduced as a trial exhibit (p. 8-9) last week), so Libby's concerns about security could have been much broader. Special Counsel Fitzgerald admitted as much in a court hearing last May 5 when he said this (p. 21):

FITZGERALD: ...I agree with Mr. Wells the New Republic article does
not discuss the wife. There is an ambiguity about what Mr. Libby and
this person are discussing on the phone afterward as to what the
complication is.

An ambiguity! If Libby mentioned the wife, there is no ambiguity; if he did not, then Edelman is taking us nowhere.

Now, maybe Libby does mention the wife but notes the security concern at a different point in the conversation, thus leaving an ambiguity as to whether Libby realizes that Ms. Plame's CIA status is classified. But given the way these other witnesses have testified, my guess is that there is, in Fitzgerald's mind anyway, some "ambiguity" as to whether the wife was the topic of the conversation. Which means that she was not mentioned, and that, for all but the most resolute of conspiracists, there will be no ambiguity at all.

We should know on Monday.

MORE: Keep hope alive! Better days should be ahead for Fitzgerald with Fleischer and Addington still to come, although I am betting Fleischer will be yet another fizzle.

Last week at the Libby trial the defense dropped a bombshell with the announcement that Ari Fleischer had leaked about Valerie Plame to David Gregory of NBC News. Mr. Gregory had been the opposite of forthcoming when the NBC News Washington Bureau discussed the absurdity of the idea that they would have received a leak and then simply sat on it. I characterized this as, at a minimum, a lie of omission, but...

What about Patrick Fitzgerald? Special Counsel Fitzgerald had asserted the following in a letter to the defense dated Jan 26, 2006 (Exhibit C):

"[The Special Counsel was] not aware of any reporters who knew prior to July 14, 2003,
that Valerie Plame, Ambass. Wilson's wife, worked at the CIA, other
than: Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, Bob Novak, Walter Pincus and Matthew Cooper." (In a footnote, they add the clarification that they mean either "Valerie Plame" or 'Wilson's wife".)

Well, then - isn't David Gregory a reporter? If not, why does he keep popping up to hassle that nice Mr. Snow?

Or, if David Gregory is a reporter, as seems likely, what does it mean for Mr. Fitzgerald to say he is not aware of whether Mr. Gregory received a leak?

I am only able to conjure two possibilities (but I welcome suggestions!):

(a) the defense attorneys made a misstatement (or were misinterpreted), and Ari Fleischer did not say he leaked to Mr. Gregory, or

(b) Mr. Fitzgerald is playing the now-classic "it depends on the meaning of 'aware'" game - since (again, based on the defense opening statement) he never took testimony from Mr. Gregory, perhaps he was prepared to argue that, having only Mr. Fleischer's uncorroborated testimony, he did not actually know whether Mr. Gregory received a leak or not.

Whether he was misleading the defense or not back in January 2006, it appears that they were brought up to speed at some later date; I suppose that if they are happy and the judge is happy, then it's all good. Presumably, this Gregory-Fleishcer exchange will be clear by the end of the trial.Props to the Anon Lib for noting the oddity in the Fitzgerald correspondence.

NOTE: I suppose Fleischer could have come forward with the specific news about David Gregory after Jan 26, 2006, but that seems very strange to me. He had already testified, and some of his evidence was in the indictment from Oct 2005. Could he be one more guy whose memory improved with the passage of time?

Cecil Turner, a careful reader and most logical Just One Minute poster has done an outstanding job summarizing the testimony of the first three witnesses in the Libby trial. I cannot improve on it. (No one can.)

I'm looking at the indictment and so far Fitzgerald's case is tracking chronologically with the allegations in it.

Yes, and I think it's worth reviewing the bidding. The first time the indictment alleges Libby heard of Plame was from Grossman:

6.On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of State orally advised LIBBY in the White House that, in sum and substance, Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that State Department personnel were saying that Wilson’s wife was involved in the planning of his trip.

And he said substantially the same thing under oath. Unfortunately, in Oct 2003, he told the FBI about "two or three telephone conversations" and no face-to-face meetings. That's a major glaring error that can't be reconciled, the first story (no meeting) is obviously more persuasive, and it severely undercuts the contention he ever told Libby about the Plame detail. And since he's tying the date to his meeting calendar, his timeline falls apart as well.

Next up we have Mr Grenier:

7.On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of

Wilson

’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that

Wilson

Wilson

’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending on the trip.

Unfortunately, his actual claim was “I believe I did.” And even that is impossible to reconcile with an IG meeting Grenier had on July 31, 2003 about talking to Libby, in which he "didn't tell them anything about telling Libby about Plame." Again, his latter version is unbelievable, and there's no credible indication he ever mentioned Plame to Libby.

We skip the undisputed VP reference, and go straight to Craig Schmall:

11. On or about June 14, 2003, LIBBY met with a CIA briefer. During their conversation he expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the Vice President’s office, and discussed with the briefer, among other things, “Joe Wilson” and his wife “Valerie Wilson,” in the context of

Wilson

’s trip to

Niger

.

The "displeasure" is obviously a different subject, perfectly valid, and Schmall tracks it down and finds the leaks are disinformation. Further, the only indication of "Valerie Wilson" are Schmall's handwritten notes . . . and he has no recollection of discussing it with Libby (or of much else).

Looks to me like Fitz is 0 for 3 on credibly demonstrating someone actually told Libby about Plame prior to the Wilson article (except for the one mention by the VP which Libby entered into his notes and duly reported to the FBI). It also looks to me like Fitz seriously overstated his evidence in the indictment, and that the witnesses' trend toward more incriminating statements over time suggest either groupthink due to media hype or being coached. In either event, Libby's paranoia over being "scapegoated" is a little more understandable. These were always the weakest of the allegations, but I can't believe this is how Fitz expected to start the case.

January 26, 2007

He is describing the testimony of Cathie Martin, who handled press relations for Dick Cheney, and reports this:

She testified that both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were intensely interested in Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had been sent to Africa to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger for his nuclear weapons program.

"Intensely interested in Ms. Wilson"? That is simply not supported by two versions of her testimony. Here is James Joyner's liveblog:

Except for 10 or 20 seconds when you recollect you told Mr. Libby
and VP Cheney about Wilson’s trip and his wife’s role, you had no other
discussions with either of them about Mrs. Wilson?
“Not that I recall.”

At no time during the talking points discussion, did you mention Mrs. Wilson? No.

You wanted to get the whole story out? Yes.

But you didn’t think the wife was part of that whole story? “I didn’t think it was helpful to us.”

Your understanding was that Vice President Cheney’s intention was to get all the truth out about Wilson’s trip? Yes.

Is it correct that “at no time IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE” did the VP
indicate to you that Mrs. Wilson or her status was part of getting that
story out? Correct.

“Do you have any knowledge of Libby EVER discussing with ANY
reporter information about Mrs. Wilson and her employment status?” No.

Ms. Wheeler offers a similar account:

W Fitz also asked questions whether you had recollection of
discussions about what reporters were saying about Mrs. Valerie Wilson.

M No recollection

W Except for 10-20 seconds when you recollect you told Libby and Cheney about Mrs. Wilson's wife working at CIA

M My recollection was the only conversation is when I learned of his name and his wife worked there.

W and you never had any discussions about Mrs. Wilson.

W During this week when you were part of the team at no time did you
say anything to Libby about Mrs. Wilson. Your job, get whole story
out, get whole story out, Libby wanted to get the whole story out. You
did not view "the wife" as part of the story

M it seemed not helpful to us. It explained something to me about why he got sent.

W when you were on a mission, you did not view "the wife" as part of
that story. When you listen to VP Cheney, at no time did you understand
that to have anything to do with the wife.

Objection.

Sidebar.

2:41

W [Wells walking away from mike] Vice President says you should be
completely accurage, lay it all out. WRTresponding to Wilson's
allegations.

M VP wanted whole story about trip, report, made public.

W Wanted the WHOLE story out.

Objection

W Is it correct that at no time did VP indicate to you that he viewed Mrs. Wilson or her job status as part of the story?

M I did not have the conversatoin with the VP about that.

W VP Never uttered a WORD to you IN HIS LIFE.

M Not that I recall but I uttered words to him about.

W You have had no recollectoin

M I can't be sure it lasted 20-30 seconds. I remember my portion of the conversation.

W Conversation also involved other information about Wilson. Mr
Fitzgerald asked you about what took place during week of July 7.
Conversations with Hadely, Mitchell, Tenet, reporters, conversations
with VP and Mr. Libby. Is it correct that you have no knowledge of
Scooter Libby EVER discussing any information concerning Mrs. Wilson or
her employment status. And the conversations that you were asked
questions about involving Mitchell and Hadley. Those conversation had
nothing to do with the wife, Mrs. Wilson.

M Correct.

I understand that it may suit Mr. Lewis' story line, but I don't understand how one mention of less than 30 seconds with no apparent follow-up can be construed as "intensely interested in Ms. Wilson".

Of course, Mr. Lewis is a sly fox - what he wrote was "intensely interested in Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV", which literalists and Times editors can defend as correct - Libby and Cheney had an intense interest in Mr. Wilson and no discernible interest in his wife, at least per the account of Ms. Martin.

When did Cathie Martin, Dick Cheney press relations person, talk to Bill Harlow, her counterpart at the CIA, and learn that Joe Wilson's wife was with the CIA and played a role in sending him on his trip to Niger?

Per Fitzgerald's indictment of Libby, it was "[n]ot earlier than June 2003, but on or before July 8, 2003", but it is placed in the section of the indictment headed "LIBBY's Actions Following Wilson's July 6 "Op Ed" Column" (point 19). Per her testimony, it was sometime between the Nick Kristof column on May 6 and Joe Wilson's July 6 appearance on Meet The Press.

The defense provides phone records (Joyner) and explores the likelihood that her chat ocurred on June 11, which was roughly the time Libby was hearing and forgetting the Plame news from Cheney, Grossman (maybe) and Grenier (again, maybe; dare we say, maybe-er).

To buttress that notion let's flash back to Grenier's testimony - he was the top CIA guy who first confirmed to Libby the CIA role in the Niger trip. His gist, for our current purposes - he had Libby on the phone on June 11, agreed that the CIA should work out a statement, and immediately handed the phone to Harlow, who talked to his press counterpart at the office of the vice president, which would have been Ms. Martin.

Libby's only response was asking whether CIA could reveal the interest of State and Defense publicly.

Told him I had to ask Director of Public Affairs. He was in the
meeting I just left. I may have said I could get him right away. I led
him to believe I could get access to Director of Public Affairs right
away. Director of Public Affairs was Bill Harlow.

I believe I hung up-did not keep him on hold.

Whispered to Harlow I needed him to come out, asked whether we could
reveal it publicly to the press, he thought yes we probably could
release it publicly to the press. We can publicly work something out.
Work out language that CIA would be able to use with the press.

When you told that to Libby what did you do next.

Libby said that someone who deals with press would deal with Harlow on that issue.

Did Libby talk about the name or identity of the press person. It was woman. The name was Cathie.

What happened next was I put Harlow on the phone. I thought that he
would be speaking with Libby. As soon as he got on the phone, he was
speaking with a female press officer. I don't recall how I inferred it,
it may be that he called her by name. I was a little bit surprised.

Is it fair to say that all of these conversations, the note and phone calls with Mr. Libby all occurred on June 11.

A few days later did you see Libby at a meeting. I remember seeing him at a meeting, I believe it was a deputies meeting.

He thanked me for the information said it had been useful.

Seems clear enough. Grenier is absurdly hazy on whether his discussion with Libby included a mention of the wife but it appears that Harlow mentioned the wife to Martin later that same day, and she relayed it to Libby and Cheney immediately. Libby then commenced to forget the June 11 mention, as he forgot the June 12 mention from Cheney noted in the indictment and presumably Libby's notes. As a stray thought, what are the odds that defense can collapse those two mentions into one incident - maybe Libby's notes refer to at June 11 discussion amongst himself, Cheney, and Martin.

That would dispatch Ms. Martin; the suspense mounts as we wait for Addington and Fleischer.

January 25, 2007

NOTE - Neil Lewis of the Times is still misreporting the gist of Libby's testimony [but he is getting closer. Yesterday and today-

Mr. Libby has sworn that he did not discuss Ms. Wilson’s identity with
reporters in the spring and summer of 2003. But two reporters, Judith
Miller, formerly of The New York Times, and Matthew Cooper, formerly of
Time Magazine, have testified that Mr. Libby explicitly told them about
Ms. Wilson.

Nonsense - Libby testified that he heard about Plame from Cheney, forgot, then learned it 'as if for the first time' from Tim Russert, after which he discussed it with Miller and Cooper. Here is Neil Lewis asymptotically closing in on the truth-

Mr. Libby is facing five felony counts that he lied when he told a grand jury and F.B.I. agents that he learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity from reporters.

January 24, 2007

Marc Grossman, who came across as cool and cooperative in yesterday’s
testimony, is bumbling and unhelpful today. Defense attorney Ted Wells
asked him why, in two separate interviews with the FBI prior to his
appearance before the grand jury, he told them that he had relayed
information about Joe Wilson’s Niger trip by telephone but he is now
telling the jury that it was in face-to-face meetings. He can not
explain this.

That person [the CIA officier relaying info to Grenier on the Wilson trip] “mentioned” that Wilson’s wife worked in the division and
was the impetus behind the trip. “I am certain the individual did not
tell me the name, only that it was Amb Wilson’s wife.”

However, Grenier had a fuzzy memory as well:

During FBI testimony, “do you recall if you talked about the topic
of Mr. Wilson’s wife with Mr. Libby?” He told them that “if I think
back, I think I would have said something to Mr. Libby but could not
say for certain.”

At the grand jury? “That I may have” but wasn’t sure.”

Since then, have you given it any more thought? Yes. “I’ve been
going it over and over in my mind.” Eventually, he came to “feel
guilty” thinking “maybe I had revealed too much,” eventually revealing
the identity of a CIA officer.

Ms. Wheeler has more - apparently it was only in the fullness of time that Grenier realized he had mentioned Wilson's wife to Libby - in early meetings with investigators and the grand jury, he was unsure and couldn't remember. And incredibly, Libby forgot about it.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- The state bar has added ethics charges to a
complaint filed against the prosecutor who brought sexual assault
charges against three Duke lacrosse players, accusing him of withholding DNA evidence and misleading the court.

The new charges by the North Carolina State
Bar against Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong were announced
Wednesday and could lead to his removal from the state bar, according
to a copy of the updated complaint.

Nifong's office arranged for
a private lab to conduct DNA testing as part of the investigation into
allegations three men raped a 28-year-old woman hired to perform as a
stripper at a party thrown by the lacrosse team last March.

Those
tests uncovered genetic material from several men on the woman's
underwear and body, but none from any lacrosse player. The bar
complaint alleges those results weren't released to defense lawyers in
a timely fashion and that Nifong repeatedly said in court he had turned
over all evidence that would potentially benefit the defense.

Nifong's
actions constitute a ''systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion ...
prejudicial to the administration of justice,'' the complaint read.

So often I find myself asking - is it true, or is that a report from David Shuster? In the brutally competitive world of television news David Shuster of NBC has hit upon a winning formula - make stuff up that appeals to his left wing audience. Below I have highlighted five dubious reports, all related to the Plame case and all slanted against Bush and Cheney. In multiple misadventures with Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews Mr. Shuster has

(1) edited away a key qualifier to make it appear that Cheney authorized the Plame leak;

(2) misrepresented the contents of a the publicly-available portion of a National Intelligence Estimate;

(3) walked out of a courtroom with "news" everyone else missed, attributing to the Libby defense announcements made by the prosecution (and later clarified);

(4) aired an "exclusive" originally broken by Raw Story but confirmed by no one else; and

This is a document released by the court. It's a letter from Patrick
Fitzgerald to Scooter Libby's legal team. And it says, "As we discussed
during our telephone conversation, Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information to the press by his superiors."

Here is what Shuster did not report - the document actually said that Libby "was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors". By dropping the qualifier both Olbermann and Shuster were able to pretend that Libby was going to use the "Cheney authorized it" as a defense of the Plame leak. Here, for example, is Olbermann's intro:

OLBERMANN: ...the questionable disclosure of classified information is at the heart
of major new developments tonight in the CIA leak investigation,
reports that Scooter Libby is planning to defend himself by saying his
boss, the vice president of the United States, encouraged him to leak
secrets to reporters.

Here is Bob Somerby on the reporting about the declassification and leaking of the NIE:

How bad would the factual bungling get? Our analysts nearly fell off
their chairs when they heard David Shuster say the following on last
evening’s Hardball:

SHUSTER (4/10/06): Based on Libby’s grand jury testimony, much of what
Libby told New York Times reporter Judith Miller about the intelligence
document was wrong.

In their crucial July 8, 2003 meeting, Libby told her, quote, “one key
judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was vigorously trying to procure
uranium.” But that was not a judgment at all, much less a key judgment, according to CIA officials who wrote the document. And they said the "vigorously trying to pursue" language was not in the document at all.

In other words, it may have been the same selective use of intelligence
to justify the war that was used to sell the war. Ignoring the views of
several government agencies, while accepting the views of one.

Say what? The claim that Iraq had been “vigorously trying to procure uranium” wasn’t in the NIE at all?
Shuster’s statement was amazingly wrong; as we noted in yesterday’s
HOWLER, the NIE stated (on page 24) that Iraq had been “vigorously
trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake; acquiring either would
shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons” (click here,
then scroll down). Somehow, Shuster had managed to bungle this
elementary fact. And omigod! An hour later, MSNBC sports expert Keith
Olbermann bungled it too:

OLBERMANN (4/10/06): According to the testimony of the former New York
Times reporter Judith Miller, Mr. Libby exaggerated—if not outright
lied—about the importance of the Niger connection in the NIE, telling
her it was a “key judgment” of the document and that Iraq was, quote,
vigorously trying to obtain uranium. In fact, the claim was not a judgment at all, and the NIE contained nothing about Iraq vigorously pursuing uranium.

Good grief! But then, this is the process we warned you about when it began at the end of last week. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/8/06.

Olbermann and Shuster are heroes amongst a subset of left-wing bloggers and viewers. But aren't basic reading skills part of Shuster's job description?

(3) All those lawyers look alike to me...

In this installment Mr. Shuster attributed to the Libby defense team the blockbuster news that Libby had been "warned about the implication of outing Valerie Plame's
name" (I'm quoting Olbermann's summary there). As a subsequent transcript and court filing made clear, several different things had blurred together in Shuster's imagination:

(a) Libby's defense team said that Libby had been advised, briefly, to hold off on leaking the NIE;

(b) Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, said that

"In a different conversation that Mr. Libby was present for, a witness
did describe to Mr. Libby and another person the damage that can be
caused specifically by the outing of Ms. Wilson."

(c) In a subsequent filing we learned that Mr. Fitzgerald was engaging in a bit of theatrics - that "warning" to Libby came after the publication of the Novak column:

The July 14 Chicago Sun Times column by Mr. Novak is relevant
because on the day the article was published, a CIA official was asked
in the defendant's presence, by another person in the OVP, whether that
CIA official had read that column. (The CIA official has not.) At some
time thereafter, as discussed briefly at the March [sic: should be
"May"] 5 oral argument, the CIA official discussed in the defendant's
presence the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one
of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column.

We can't fault Mr. Shuster for being unaware of the timing of the warning to Libby. But just for laughs, here is how he conflated the other information:

Olbermann:...Scooter Libby's attorney
says he was warned about the implication of outing Valerie Plame's
name, any idea who warned him or how did this come out in court?

Shuster: It came
out from defense attorney's when they're talking about possible
evidence that might get introduced to show that Scooter Libby did not
intent to leak Valerie Plame's identity.... but it does explain one
thing. If this information and if this warning to Scooter Libby came from the CIA
or an official representing the CIA. It does explain why the CIA was so
infuriated right from the beginning when it was disclosed right from
the beginning when it was disclosed that this information got leaked to
reporters and why the criminal referral from the CIA to the justice
dept. happened so quickly.

Look, I appreciate that live courtooms can get confusing. But why is NBC sending Shuster to cover the live Libby trial if he can't handle it?

On Chris Matthews' Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed (Watch the video of Shuster's report here).

MSNBC has learned new information about the damage caused by the White House leaks.

Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation
three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material
into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson’s cover was blown,the administration’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.

Now, no serious reporter has gotten that story. However, we can find a Pulitzer Prize winner who covers the intel beat - Dana Priest was asked about this in an on-line chat a few days later:

Valley Forge, Pa.: Hi Dana,

Thanks for doing these chats.

Now we are reading that Valerie Plame was involved with tracking
nuclear proliferation/capabilities in Iran. Isn't this old news? (I
seem to remember reading this same thing quite a while ago in the MSM -
I don't generally read blogs)

From what you hear, was Ms. Plame working on Iran, how important was
she to the tracking efforts, and how much has her "outing" really set
us back?

Dana Priest: It was reported before that she worked
on proliferation issues for the CIA. The leap in this new round of
information is that her outing significantly impacted our current intel
on Iran. I don't buy it. First, no one person who quit clandestine work
four years ago is going to make that big of a dent in current
knowledge. But also, nothing like this came up at the time of her
outing and I believe it would have. Think we need some actual details.
At present it just doesn't smell right.

"I don't buy it... it just doesn't smell right". We have a prize winning reporter not noted as a friend of the Administration lined up against David Shuster and Raw Story... you make the call!

(5) Ahh, but "wiped out" must mean "shredded", or what's a metaphor?

Continuing his knack of walking out of a courtroom with a hundred other journalists and coming up with the story everyone else missed, yesterday Shuster reported this:

According to prosecutors, the evidence will show that Scooter Libby
destroyed a note from Vice President Cheney about their conversations
and about how Vice President Cheney wanted the Wilson matter handled.

Stephen Spruiell of NRO tackled this last night, as did yours truly. For a quick hit, let's cut to James Joyner, who was liveblogging from the courtroom, discussed an earlier Shuster effort which seemed to include some editorial intervention:

David Shuster of MSNBC, who is sitting in the room with me, reports some big breaking news:

Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 “wiped
out” a Cheney note just before Libby’s first FBI interview when he said
he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, from
reporters, not the vice president.

It was not clear if the reference to wiped out was literal or figurative.

I would note for the record that every other person in the media
room, including bloggers for the liberal Firedoglake, are convinced it
was the latter. Indeed, the idea that Fitzgerald would accuse Libby in
his opening statements of destroying evidence, something with which he
was never charged or seriously investigated, strains credulity.

[Libby attorney Ted Wells] was most effective picking apart the three reporters whose
recollections contradict Libby's. He suggested that Tim Russert had the
faulty memory. The host of Meet the Press says he didn't tell
Libby about Wilson's wife because he didn't know about her status as a
CIA employee, but Wells argued that Russert may have been in a position
to have known. David Gregory, the NBC White House reporter who works
with Russert, had been told by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer that
Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Wells argued that Gregory or his
colleague Andrea Mitchell, who also claimed to know, would have passed
this information on to Russert before he had his conversation with
Libby.

And as the two legal teams began their courtroom battle, new
information was disclosed about the leak affair, including the
revelation that Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time
of the leak, had identified Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer to NBC News
reporter David Gregory a week before the leak appeared in Robert
Novak's July 14, 2003 column, and that Fleischer, during the subsequent
criminal investigation, took the Fifth Amendment and demanded (and
received) immunity before testifying to Fitzgerald's' grand jury.
Fleischer told the grand jury that he had learned about Valerie
Wilson's CIA affiliation first from Libby and then from Dan Bartlett,
the White House communications director. (This directly implicated yet
two more White House officials in the scandal.) Gregory, though, did
not report the information, and he later declined to talk to Fitzgerald
about his conversation with Fleischer. Fitzgerald never subpoenaed him.
(In a response to an email from a colleague asking about today's
disclosure, Gregory emailed, "I can't help you, sorry.")

I question the assertion that Gregory received the leak "a week" before the Novak column; per the EmptyWheel live account it was July 11, which jibes with the timeline that Libby and Fleischer leaked after they knew Novak's story was set to go.

But maybe - Fleischer got the news on July 7, then headed to Africa, presumably with David Gregory, on the President's trip.

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, Wells asserted for
the first time, had gotten immunity from prosecution and then confessed
to the FBI that he had personally leaked Plame’s status to NBC White
House reporter David Gregory.

OK, it got some play; I am still waiting for the WaPo and NY Times. [Which as of Wednesday morning have no mention of Gregory or Fleischer. However, Josh Gerstein of the NY Sun offers this:

"Ari Fleischer had conversations with reporters about Ambassador
Wilson's wife he shouldn't have had," Mr. Fitzgerald said yesterday. He
said the disclosures could be traced to a "seed" Mr. Libby planted by
mentioning Ms. Plame to Mr. Fleischer during a lunch conversation.

Mr. Wells said one of the reporters Mr. Fleischer talked to about
Ms. Plame was an NBC News White House correspondent, David Gregory. The
defense attorney said the conversation, which took place during a
presidential trip to Africa, took place immediately after Mr. Fleischer
discussed Ms. Plame with the White House's communications director,
Daniel Bartlett, and was more likely triggered by Mr. Bartlett than by
Mr. Libby.

And none of these worthies pick up on the Shuster "exclusive" that Libby destroyed evidence. Keep in mind, Shuster did not get an exclusive interview with anyone - he watched the same presentation as a hundred other reporters and came away with his own exclusive.

[Here, for example, is Josh Gerstein again:

Aside from the finger-pointing at Mr. Rove and the disclosures about
Mr. Fleischer, the remainder of the opening arguments of Messrs. Wells
and Fitzgerald went largely as anticipated.

January 23, 2007

Here in the Pedant's Corner we are lodging objections to the opening statements.

First, Fitzgerald, in an effort to establish Libby's motive to lie, claims that Libby committed felony perjury and obstruction in order to save his job (and we applaud the liveblogging effort of Marcy Wheeler, the Empty Wheel):

Talks about WH [White House] telling everyone anyone would be involved would be fired.

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want
to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will
be taken care of.

If somebody
did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take
the appropriate action.

Libby was an experienced lawyer. As best he should have been able to judge, he had not broken any law by leaking Plame's identity, which was Bush's original criteria. Although the press has had fun twisting Bush's statement to something broader, Fitzgerald may have a hard time making "involved" stick once the defense pushes back.

Pursuant to a request from the Department of Justice, I am instructing you to preserve and maintain the following:

“[F]or the time period February 1, 2002 to the present, all documents, including without limitation all electronic records, telephone records of any kind (including but not limited to any records that memorialize telephone calls having been made), correspondence, computer records, storage devices, notes, memoranda, and diary and calendar entries, that relate in any way to:

1. Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, and/or his wife’s purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency;

2. Contacts with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, and/or his wife’s purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and

3. Contacts with reporters Knut Royce, Timothy M. Phelps, or Robert D. Novak, or any individual(s) acting directly or indirectly, on behalf of these reporters.”

Point (2) seems clear enough - "any member or representative of the news media" certainly extends beyond Novak. Darn - it would have been a good defense point if true.

We cover David Gregory's deceit below, but David Shuster of MSNBC is having great fun covering the Libby trial, mainly because his editors let him make stuff up, as they have been doing for a while. And why not - there is a guaranteed audience for Bush-bashing, no matter how slim the factual foundation.

According to prosecutors, the evidence will show that Scooter Libby
destroyed a note from Vice President Cheney about their conversations
and about how Vice President Cheney wanted the Wilson matter handled.

Stephen Spruiell and James Joyner tackle this. Mr. Spruiell takes us back to an earlier version of the same story, now edited out of existence but preserved at E&P:

Fitzgerald also alleged that Libby in
September 2003 “wiped out” a Cheney note just before Libby's first FBI
interview when he said he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA
operative Valerie Plame, from reporters, not the vice president.

It
was not clear if Fitzgerald meant that an attempt was made to destroy
the note or that Libby had forgotten about it. In any case, the note
was recovered and is part of the evidence.

Here is James Joyner, quoting an earlier Shuster report and adding commentary:

David Shuster of MSNBC, who is sitting in the room with me, reports some big breaking news:

Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 “wiped
out” a Cheney note just before Libby’s first FBI interview when he said
he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, from
reporters, not the vice president.

It was not clear if the reference to wiped out was literal or figurative.

I would note for the record that every other person in the media
room, including bloggers for the liberal Firedoglake, are convinced it
was the latter. Indeed, the idea that Fitzgerald would accuse Libby in
his opening statements of destroying evidence, something with which he
was never charged or seriously investigated, strains credulity.

The EmptyWheel, who yields to no one in her disdain for Evil BushCo, provided this liveblogging coverage of Fitzgerald's opening statement:

The defendant lied. He made up a story. He told the story that he
wasn't relying on any of the information he heard from government
officials. He relied on information he got from reporters

VP notes–Libby knew that note was in his file. But he wiped it out.

His story was essentially this. Learned it from Russert. I don't know this. Passed it on to other reporters.

Well - maybe Shuster went back and asked Patrick Fitzgerald to deliver the opener a second time.

Here he dropped a key qualifier to make it appear that Cheney authorized a Plame leak, dropping the phrase "information about the NIE" and reporting this:

This is a document released by the court. It's a letter from Patrick
Fitzgerald to Scooter Libby's legal team. And it says, "As we discussed
during our telephone conversation, Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information to the press by his superiors."

Bob Somerby thumped Shuster for misstating, or failing to read, the NIE.

Shuster is not a serious reporter, but he has a devoted following in the self-styled "reality-based" community. One can almost hear them calling, "Tell me another reality, David".

MORE: We are linking to Mark Kleiman, but let's quote the relevant passage and observe his editorial process:

Now that (1) Scooter Libby's defense team plans to blame everything and Karl Rove,
and (2) Patrick Fitzgerald has revealed that poor, confused Scooter
Libby was so busy fighting the global battle to save civilization that he shredded notes from his conversations with Cheney
(conversations in which Cheney told Libby precisely how to run the
counteroffensive against Joseph Wilson) before the FBI could get to them...

"Shredded notes" currently links to the Shuster fantasy at Think Progress.

We are relying on the live-blogging of the Libby trial by the always-astute EmptyWheel, who is covering the opening statement of Libby's attorney, Ted Wells, but we have a potential blockbuster absolutely guaranteed to get exactly zero headlines.

Ted Wells drops the news that David Gregory of NBC received a leak about Plame from Ari Fleischer on July 11:

Now shows Ari dislcoses to David Gregory on July 11 that Ambassador
Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Fleischer tells that before Libby was
ever indicted. "I told David Gregory." Talks about time difference,
says Ari leaked to Gregory first.

Now let's flash back to October 29, 2005, just after the Libby indictment. Russert has gathered the Washington Bureau to discuss the case on CNBC's "Tim Russert Show". At the time, I excerpted the transcript and suggested they were rehearsing their cover story. So let's cut to David Gregory:

RUSSERT: Well, ironically, when I was asked about this, I said, if I
had known this, I would have told Andrea Mitchell. I would have told
Pete Williams.MITCHELL: In fact, Tim, you would have called me and
said, `You hosted "Meet the Press" and questioned Joe Wilson and
covered the agency and you didn't know that the wife--what's going on
with you?'RUSSERT: And I did call Neal Shapiro, the head of NBC
News, and say, `You know, we have this high-level viewer complaint
about what's on cable,' and that--you know, that was the extent of my
sharing information with Neal Shapiro.GREGORY: Wait...RUSSERT:
If I had known something with--then I would have said to Neal--and Neal
would have said, `Get to the cameras.' Or you know what? Actually it is
so sensitive...MITCHELL: We would have decided not to...RUSSERT: ...I would have even talked--we would have talked it through and said...MITCHELL: Right.RUSSERT: ...`Hey, what about this?' or `Should we check her status?' It's easy to say that in hindsight, but I...MITCHELL: In fact, we should tell...RUSSERT: ...when I read it in Novak, boom.GREGORY:
And it is interesting--it's also interesting, I should just point out,
that nobody called me at any point, which is unfortunately...WILLIAMS: Apparently not.GREGORY: ...not the point.RUSSERT: Does anybody ever?GREGORY: But I just wanted to note that.RUSSERT: I've been meaning to talk to you about that.

Nobody called him except Ari Fleischer. Baffling. Now, before I run amok, let me remind folks that Libby "confessed" to leaking to Glenn Kessler of the WaPo, who spoke with Fitzgerald and insisted that Libby had done no such thing.

SO - one might presume that Fitzgerald spoke with David Gregory, and one ought to hold open the possibility that Mr. Fleischer made the same type of error made by Mr. Libby.

However, there is a small straw in the wind from Fitzgerald's opening statement (again, based on the EW liveblogging):

Ari had conversations with reporters that he should not have had

Reporters, plural? I have long asserted that Ari Fleischer leaked to Walter Pincus, but an additional leak to David Gregory would justify the use of the plural.

I have no doubt that reporters will line up to learn whether David Gregory (a) was interviewed by Fitzgerald (apparently not, see MORE); (b) received a leak from Ari Fleischer, and (c) lied on the "Tim Russert Show" on Oct 29, 2005. Unless, of course, the media covers for their own, which is what will happen here.

Mr. Russert was not even required to go down to court. They
interviewed Mr. Russert in a law office. All the Grand Jurors saw was
Russert's transcript.

Mr. Russert was not asked one question about David Gregory, or about Andrea Mitchell.

Mr. Fitzgerald says the FBI was concerned about getting to the
truth. Tim Russert had a deal. He had a deal with the government. He
would only be questioned about his conversation with Mr. Libby. He had
a deal. [Says it with a snear in his voice.]

They didn't ask Mr. Russert about Mitchell or Gregory.

Went out and asked if they would submit to an interview.

They don't want to be interviewed. No subpoena. She doesn't talk to the government.

So neither Gregory nor Mitchell spoke with Fitzgerald? That is consistent with Mitchell's story, and means Fitzgerald left the Gregory detail hanging. Wow. I am so surprised that I want to see some one else's coverage to see if the EmptyWheel got a flat here or something - unlikely, because she is well up to speed on the implications of all this, but still... [Several big time journalists picked up on the Fleischer-Gregory item - link].

A NOTE TO DAVID GREGORY"S APOLOGISTS: Please, stop it. Yes, it would be hard to sustain a perjury conviction on the basis of that transcript. However, Gregory is a reporter, not a contestant on "I've Got A Secret" - if Russert and Mitchell are explaining that they didn't get leaks, so therefore they could not have known, it is incumbent upon Mr. Gregory to deliver a bit of corrective news and admit to his involvement with Mr. Fleischer. Failure to do so is a lie of omission, i.e., the deliberate concealment of relevant information with the intent to deceive.

And by chiming in with "nobody called me at any point", Gregory certainly does not clarify the situation for the viewer. Quite the contrary. In this context, I consider that a clear lie - his intent was to leave viewers with the impression that he had not received a leak.

And to be fair, perhaps he did not - at this point, I would not expect there to be much evidence other than Ari's word.

Let the people speak! Which witness do you most want to see at the Libby trial - who is the one that will have you rushing home early and flipping on Court TV, only to be reminded that the trial is not televised?

Some contestants:Dick Cheney - "Big Time" will almost surely not appear in a sulfurous puff of smoke with horns and a tail, nor will he reach under his sport coat, pull out a shotgun, and pepper Special Counsel Fitzgerald; by these acts of forbearance, Cheney will exceed current expectations.

But will he fulfill the lefty fantasy and wither under Fitzgerald's brilliant and ruthless cross-examination? Will he be this generation's Oliver North, thrilling the right with a stirring defense of Libby and the Administration? Dick Cheney has to be the favorite for "Biggest Headlines".

Tim Russert: Will Tim Russert stun the courtroom by clearing his throat and admitting that, well, maybe his grand jury testimony was a trifle misleading? Let's reprise his classic, easily parsed "denial", for which he took heat in 2005:

Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that
conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA
operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby.
Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame's name and her role at
the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.

Too specific! Did Russert tell Libby that Wilson's wife (name unknown) was at the CIA (position unknown)? Unknown! But this was cited in a judge's footnote as a description of Russert's testimony (page 3 of argument):

In his deposition, describing Plame’s
employment as a fact that would have been “[v]ery” significant to him –
one he would have discussed with NBC management and potentially sought
to broadcast – Russert stated, “I have no recollection of knowing that
[Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA], so it was impossible for me to have
[told Libby] that.” Asked to describe his “reaction” to Novak’s July 14
column, Russert said, “Wow. When I read that – it was the first time I
knew who Joe Wilson’s wife was and that she was a CIA operative…. [I]t
was news to me.”

Easily parsed! What is in the ellipsis? What does it mean to "know" that Wilson's wife is at the CIA - does that rule out Russert saying to Libby "I have heard some gossip that Wilson's wife is at the CIA; do you know anything about that and should I take it seriously?"

If Russert wobbles on this point, the trial is over. Logicians, literalists, and Fitzgerald will point out that even if Russert did mention Ms. Wilson to Libby on July 10, that could hardly have triggered Libby's leak on July 8 to Judy Miller.

The rest of us will shake our heads and ask ourselves the same question the defense will pound on a daily and hourly basis - if Tim Russert could mislead the grand jury, who else might have?

Andrea Mitchell: Ms. Mitchell either knew that Ms. Plame was with the CIA or she didn't - she said she did in October 2003, then famously backpedaled on the Don Imus show. Maybe she misspoke, or maybe she decided that she did not want to invite the Department of Justice investigators to come inquiring about her sources.

Clarice Feldman has lots on the Andrea Mitchell mystery, but let's say this - if Ms. Mitchell admits that she was in on Plame's CIA secret, that undercuts the notion that her boss, Tim Russert, was in the dark. My guess - she is a tough-minded independent woman unlikely to experience stage fright, so she will stick to her "I knew nothing" story, now that she has rehearsed it.

But I still believe she had State Dept. sources and is protecting them - her beat is foreign affairs, she was working the Wilson-Niger-ueranium story, and there was a stretch in June when the State Dept had the INR memo and no one thought the Plame tidbit was anything other than an amusing anecdote.

David Addington - formerly Cheney's chief counsel, now his chief of staff, Mr. Addington had a conversation on July 8 with Libby that will be hard for the defense to skate past. From the indictment:

18. Also on or about July 8, 2003, LIBBY met with the Counsel to the
Vice President in an anteroom outside the Vice President's Office.
During their brief conversation, LIBBY asked the Counsel to the Vice
President, in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the
CIA if an employee's spouse undertook an overseas trip.

My guess - Addington wants to protect Cheney and the Administration; if he can also protect Libby with an all-encompassing explanation, good for him.Kathie Martin - [In addition to two other significant cameo appearances], Cheney's press relations aide was in the fateful July 12 conversation with Cheney and Libby which precede Libby's leaks to Judy Miller and Matt Cooper. Speaking of whom...

Judy Miller - Ms. Miller will be called as a prosecution witness by the fellow who put her in jail for 85 days in order to gain her testimony, and is also pursuing her on an unrelated Islamic charities case. Let's say that Ms. Miller may set a new standard for hostile witnesses, and may be delightfully opaque in her testimony - delightful for the defense, that is.

For example, in her public account of her testimony Ms. Miller suggested that in addition to Libby she had other sources for her information about Plame, but her deal with Fitzgerald allowed her to refuse to name names. The defense should have fun with that.

And the defense should have fun with clear, compelling testimony such as this:

Soon
afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the
first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in
bureau?" I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time
I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the CIA. The
prosecutor asked me whether the word "bureau" might not mean the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr.
Libby had been discussing the CIA, and therefore my impression was that
he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that
dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As
to the question mark, I said I wasn't sure what it meant. Maybe it
meant I found the statement interesting. Maybe Mr. Libby was not
certain whether Mr. Wilson's wife actually worked there.

Maybe it was the CIA; maybe Libby wasn't sure she worked there; maybe Libby asked Miller if she worked there.

My guess - the defense will play "Isn't it possible" with Ms. Miller, and she will play along, just to undercut Fitzgerald. For example, "Isn't it possible that the question mark means you meant to ask Libby whether Wilson's wife was at the Bureau?" "Yes, it's possible".

Lots of things are possible.

Matt Cooper - Mr. Cooper is the TIME reporter who, per the judge, could not keep his story straight while typing it up for TIME readers:

...upon reviewing the documents presented to it, the Court discerns a slightalteration
between the several drafts of the articles, which the defense could
arguably use to impeach Cooper. See TI00011. Compare TI00030, MCX0013,
MCX0021, with, MCX0003, 0005, 00027.20 This slight alteration between
the drafts will permit the defendant to impeach Cooper, regardless of
the substance of his trial testimony, because his trial testimony
cannot be consistent with both versions.

Also, there is apparently nothing in Cooper's notes about Libby's confirmation of the Plame CIA affiliation - odd, since it was so newsworthy and memorable.

Nick Kristof - Mr. Kristof may create new embarrassment for the Times by admitting that, well, yes, Joe and Val had let him in on their little State Secret back in May. This would call into question the thoroughness of the Fitzgerald investigation and enhance the probability that Libby really was reminded about Plame by some lying reporter.

Kristof's "denial" is weak and easily parsed:

I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her CIA career and hadn't
realized she's "a hell of a shot with an AK-47,'' as a classmates at
the CIA training "farm,'' Jim Marcinkowski, recalls.

Too specific - he doesn't need to know her full career or her facility with automatic weapons to know whether she was with the CIA in 2003.

My pick for most entertaining witness - Andrea Mitchell, who was just awful with Don Imus and may be awful here. But I am sort of braced for disappointment all around - I doubt we will see a Perry Mason moment in this trial.

Nominees are open (and who did I overlook?)

MORE: The nominees are piling up - Joe Wilson may be called by the defense; Marc Grossman of the State Department is someone the defesne wants to impeach, as is Ari Fleischer, former press secretary.

Re Ari Fleischer, there is an excellent chance that he is the person mentioned in court filings as having received immunity. Immunity from what? Well, Mr. Fleischer may have leaked to Walter Pincus (that is my belief, anyway.) And why immunity? other Administration employees had been exhorted to cooperate with the investigation or lose their jobs; since Mr. Fleischer had left the Administration on July 14, 2003, the threat of job loss may not have been quite enough to motivate him to forego his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

January 22, 2007

Times reporter Neil A. Lewis is resolute in his refusal to accurately summarize the central facts of the Libby case. His effort for Monday, Jan 22 recycles his error from Jan 15. Here we go, from his latest:

Mr. Libby had nothing to do with the leak to Mr. Novak, but he
testified under oath that he had not disclosed information about Ms.
Wilson to other journalists. Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time
magazine told the grand jury that he did, in fact, talk about Ms.
Wilson with them. Mr. Libby also testified that he learned of Ms.
Wilson’s identity from a third journalist, Tim Russert of NBC News, but
Mr. Russert is expected to testify that that is false.

Folks following this case casually will find the actual testimony baffling if the Times is their source of basic information. Let me try for something short and accurate - Libby testified that he learned about Ms. Plame from Dick Cheney, then
promptly forgot it until he re-learned it a month later from reporters,
specifically Tim Russert (Karl Rove also told Libby that Bob Novak had an upcoming story about Wilson and his CIA spouse). Libby's testimony was that he provided
information about Ms. Plame to Judy Miller, Matt Cooper of TIME, and
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, in each case attributing his
information to reporter gossip (Kessler testified that Libby told him
no such thing; apparently, Libby over-confessed.)

Any chance that Mr. Lewis will get this right, or that the Times will run a correction? I exhort Mr. Lewis to peruse the indictment of I. Lewis Libby - he will find it to be a font of information, includiong such nuggets as these:

26. As part of the criminal investigation, LIBBY was
interviewed by Special Agents of the FBI on or about October 14 and
November 26, 2003, each time in the presence of his counsel. During
these interviews, LIBBY stated to FBI Special Agents that:

a.
During a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC News on July 10 or 11,
2003, Russert asked LIBBY if LIBBY was aware that Wilson's wife worked
for the CIA. LIBBY responded to Russert that he did not know that, and
Russert replied that all the reporters knew it. LIBBY was surprised by
this statement because, while speaking with Russert, LIBBY did not
recall that he previously had learned about Wilson's wife's employment
from the Vice President.

b. During a conversation
with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine on or about July 12, 2003, LIBBY
told Cooper that reporters were telling the administration that
Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, but that LIBBY did not know if this
was true; and

c. LIBBY did not discuss Wilson's wife
with New York Times reporter Judith Miller during a meeting with Miller
on or about July 8, 2003.

and this:

32. It was part of the corrupt endeavor that during his grand
jury testimony, defendant LIBBY made the following materially false and
intentionally misleading statements and representations, in substance, under oath:

...

c. LIBBY
advised Judith Miller of the New York Times on or about July 12, 2003
that he had heard that other reporters were saying that Wilson's wife
worked for the CIA but LIBBY did not know whether that assertion was
true.

As a wildly optimistic aside, the central theme of Mr. Lewis' story is that this case may have changed the legal landscape for reporter-source relationships. All very interesting, but - there remains a possibility that the defense will call as witnesses Nick Kristof, David Sanger, and/or James Risen, all of the Times - all three have had their names bandied about in recent court documents.

Any chance of the Times reporting on that before the event, or will they be as surprised as the rest of us?

Try the overworked, under-respected Public Editor, if they still have one - public@nytimes.com. This Neil Lewis thing has gone beyond ridiculous.

January 19, 2007

Yesterday, as part of the Media Bloggers Association, I covered the ongoing voir dire
of potential jurors for the upcoming Libby trial. This is the first
time bloggers have been issued press credentials to cover a federal
trial. Voir dire is the process of questioning potential
jurors to eliminate them for cause (for example bias or felony
convictions) or simply for no stated reason by either party (preemptory
challenges).

We
have not yet got to the preemptory challenges but many of the jurors
have been struck for cause, largely bias against the Administration and
the defendant, bias often occasioned by prejudicial pretrial publicity.

Although Special Counsel Fitzgerald has declared that this trial is
simply about whether Libby lied and obstructed an investigation, part of the mood and backdrop for this trial revolves around the question of whether national security was actually harmed by the leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation.

It is easy enough to find folks (generally on the left) who think that it was - in an iteration that is now almost a year old, Raw Story reported that Ms. Plame had been almost single-handedly holding back the Iranian nuclear development project. Chris Matthews and David Shuster of MSNBC eagerly recycled that (No Keith Olbermann??). However, David Shuster has been a particular object of our ire, since no distortion has been too absurd if it let him present a Bush-bashing angle on the Plame story. So let's see if we can find some real reporters.

Dana Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the secret CIA prisons and I think it is fair to say she is not widely viewed as an Administration mouthpiece. Here she is, commenting on the Plame-Iran link in an on-line chat from May of 2006:

Q:... From what you hear, was Ms. Plame working on Iran, how important was
she to the tracking efforts, and how much has her "outing" really set
us back?

Dana Priest: It was reported before that she
worked on proliferation issues for the CIA. The leap in this new round
of information is that her outing significantly impacted our current
intel on Iran. I don't buy it. First, no one person who quit
clandestine work four years ago is going to make that big of a dent in
current knowledge. But also, nothing like this came up at the time of
her outing and I believe it would have. Think we need some actual
details. At present it just doesn't smell right.

Here is Ms. Priest from November 2005 (with a hat tip to Jim E [but see MORE, where Foo Bar gets his due]):

Dana Priest: I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position.

Other reporters have also chimed in but they look like righties if you stand far enough to the left - here is Andrea Mitchell:

I happen to have been told that the actual damage
assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did
not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.

They
did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that
[former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out
it was quite minimal damage.They did not have to pull anyone out
undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no
physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment. So
people have kind of compared -- somebody was saying this was Aldrich
Ames or Bob Hanssen, big spies. This didn't cause damage.

Now, there is a bit of a problem with Woodward's statement: for legal reasons - mainly, they don't want to have to surrender it in discovery - the CIA holds off on performing any formal damage assessment until the legal dust has settled. However, common sense informs me that the CIA does, in fact, perform something that passes for a damage assessment without waiting three, five, or however may years to takes for the courts to clear.

I exhort folks who seriously believe otherwise to read a few Le Carre novels.

MORE: From the gracious and always interesting Foo Bar:

I'm sure I'd tip my hat to Jim E if I met him, but are you sure you're giving credit where credit is due ?

Yike! Foo Bar was the tipster for the Dana Priest bit; Jim E has been a font of wisdom, specifically with a blurb linking Andrea Mitchell to the use of the word "operative" on July 8, 2003.

Fortunately, I was not under oath. (Of course, if I had been, I would have reviewed my notes...)

I am toying with a very intriguing idea on the Libby trial; at this point, it is pre-developmental, but I thought I would toss it out for discussion.

Our friends on the left have dreams of Fitzgerald getting Cheney on the stand and getting him to admit that he ordered the outing of Valerie Plame. I am now sort of wondering whether that might be Cheney's strategy. And if it might be, it would be very cool to have made that call ahead of time - let's let everyone else be surprised.

There are some obvious problems - for example, if Cheney testifies that he "ordered" Libby to out Plame, then we will be left wondering how Libby failed to remember that order during his grand jury testimony.

However, part of the prosecution argument is that Libby may have lied to protect himself or his boss from legal problems or political embarrassment. But really - does Cheney seem like the type to get embarrassed?

And I am far from clear on the question of whether Cheney faced any legal peril at all - as he noted in the discussion of the NIE, classification and declassification are Executive Branch functions held by the President and Vice President (as described in the relevant Executive Order from March 2003.) And regarding Ms. Plame, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act requires that, in addition to having classified status, it must be the case that "the United States is taking affirmative
measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to
the United States". L'etat, c'est Cheney! Or perhaps not, but if the Vice President authorizes her disclosure, it may be legally difficult to sustain the notion that "the United States" is trying to keep her secret.

In which case, Cheney never faced any legal jeopardy for discussing or authorizing her disclosure. Taking note of his push for an expansive view of Executive power, he probably could have been sold on this view quite easily.

Which suggests that Libby was not lying to save Cheney from any legal problems. There might have been some political heat, and there were Bush's statements about finding the leakers. However, as of October 2003, the Bush/Cheney White House crew did not know about Armitage's leak to Novak (that was Powell's little secret), so in their minds, a thorough investigation may have seemed to be appropriate.

Let me finish where I started - how did Cheney "order" it in a way that Libby forgot? There is a small hint in the recent Waas piece:

Fitzgerald then bore down on the witness: "And are you telling us under
oath that from July 6th to July 14th you never discussed with Vice
President Cheney whether Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA?"

Libby replied: "No, no, I'm not saying that. On July 10 or 11 I
learned, I thought anew, that the wife—that the reporters were telling
us that the wife worked at the CIA. And I may have had a conversation
with the Vice President either late on the 11th or on the 12th in which
I relayed that reporters were saying that." As Libby further told it,
if he discussed with Cheney that Plame was a CIA officer, he had only
done so in the context of saying that the information was only an
unsubstantiated rumor that he had heard from Tim Russert.

So, Libby mentioned to Cheney his tidbit that reporters had the story; this could be Karl Rove telling Libby that Novak had the story, as described in the indictment:

21. On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior
official in the White House ("Official A") who advised LIBBY of a
conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert
Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved
in Wilson's trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be
writing a story about Wilson's wife.

Cheney dismissed the news with a "nothing to see hear" grunt that, in Cheney's mind, meant that talking about Plame was fine, albeit inconsequential; Libby did not pick up on his boss's subtle body language; and here we are.

Hmm. For a non-post, that was quite a lot of words. Anyway, I am looking for ideas on the legal argument (Cheney had no reason for fear), the political argument, and some sort of rationalization the defense might offer that would reconcile Cheney's approval with Libby's flawed memory.

Yes, this looks like a long-shot. But after several hours of noodling, I am convinced it will nag at me until I hit "Publish".

January 17, 2007

Murray Waas, who has done some terrific work on the Libby case, recently provided a new piece in the National Journal. He focused on July 12, when I. Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and press relations aide Catherine Martin discussed what to tell the press about Joe Wilson.

One of his central points is that, per Libby's testimony, Cheney authorized Libby to disclose something to the press. Libby testified that he was meant to discuss facets of the still-classified CIA account of Wilson's trip to Niger. However, Mr. Waas tells us that, in fact, Libby did not discuss the details of Wilson's trip to Niger but instead called Matt Cooper of TIME and Judy Miller of the NY Times and discussed Ms. Plame.

It is a tale well told, but it founders on the rocks of reality. Here is Mr. Waas, with my emphasis added:

On the plane ride back to Washington from Norfolk on July 12, Cheney
strategized once again with Libby and Martin as to how to discredit
Wilson's allegations, according to people familiar with the federal
grand jury testimony of both Libby and Martin.

...Aboard Air Force Two, Cheney, Libby, and Martin discussed a then-still
highly classified CIA document that they believed had information in it
that would undercut Wilson's credibility. The document was a March 8,
2002 debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after
his trip to Niger. The report did not name Wilson or even describe him
as a former U.S. ambassador who had served time in the region, but
rather as a "contact with excellent access who does not have an
established reporting record." The report made no mention of the fact
that his wife was Valerie Plame, or that she may have played a role in
having her husband sent to Niger.

Cheney told Libby that he wanted him to leak the report to the
press, according to people with first-hand knowledge of federal grand
jury testimony in the CIA leak case, and federal court records.

Cheney believed that this particular CIA debriefing report might
undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe
was far more inconclusive on the issues as to whether Saddam attempted
to buy uranium from Niger. The report said that Wilson was restricted
from interviewing any number of officials in Niger during the mission,
and he was denied some intelligence information before undertaking the
trip.

...According to a court filing by the special prosecutor, Patrick
Fitzgerald, Libby also testified to the federal grand jury "that on
July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to
speak to the press in the place of Cathie Martin (then the
communications person for the Vice President) regarding the National
Intelligence Estimate [on Iraq] and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed...
to [also] provide information contained in a document [he] understood
to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson."

...Almost immediately after disembarking Air Force Two, once back in
Washington, D.C., Libby made three telephone calls to two journalists: Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, and Judith Miller, then of The New York Times.

During both of those conversations, according to the federal grand jury
testimony of both Cooper and Miller, Libby said virtually nothing at
all about the March 8, 2002 CIA debriefing report regarding Wilson. [Editor's note: This sentence is worded differently than in the original version posted on January 12, 2007.]

Blogger's note - they may have changed it, since my upcoming criticism has been brewing since PollyUSA noted this problem over the weekend, but they did not change it enough! Here is the original formulation:

During both of those conversations, according to the federal grand jury
testimony of both Cooper and Miller, Libby said absolutely nothing at
all about the March 8, 2002 CIA debriefing report regarding Wilson.

"Absolutely" nothing has been changed to "virtually" nothing, but that won't salvage this - here is Judy Miller's account of her testimony regarding the July 12 chat with Libby:

My notes of this
phone call show that Mr. Libby quickly turned to criticizing Mr.
Wilson's report on his mission to Niger. He said it was unclear whether
Mr. Wilson had spoken with any Niger officials who had dealt with
Iraq's trade representatives.

So let's see - Cheney focused on the report's description of Wilson's restricted access to Nigerien officials; Ms. Miller testified that Libby launched into a denunciation of Wilson's account based on his limited access to Nigerien officials; and we are meant to conclude that Libby is lying?

A further point to ponder - despite Cheney's central role in this fateful July 12 conversation, Special Counsel Fitzgerald had decided not to call Cheney as a prosecution witness (instead, the defense is calling him). Just how critical is this July 12 chat to Fitzgerald's case if he does not want to call one of the key participants?

ADDENDUM: Let the skeptics be reassured - in a ruling denying the defense access to some of Ms. Miller's documents, the judge assured them that her published account was a reliable substitute.

UPDATE: Murray Waas re-opens this at the Huffington Post, and doubles down:

Almost immediately after disembarking Air Force Two, once back in
Washington, D.C., Libby made three telephone calls to two journalists:
Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, and Judith Miller, then of The New York Times.

But during both of those conversations, according to the federal
grand jury testimony of both Cooper and Miller, Libby said virtually
nothing at all, if indeed anything, about Wilson's report back to the
CIA.

Rather, Miller and Cooper testified that Libby intensely focused on
the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA officer, and that she had been
responsible for sending her husband on his mission to Niger.

For heaven's sake - Matt Cooper's testimony (or at least, his version in TIME) was that it was *Cooper* who raised the Plame topic and linked her to the Niger trip, not Libby:

On background, I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too," or words to that effect. Like Rove, Libby never used Valerie Plame's name or indicated that her status was covert, and he never told me that he had heard about Plame from other reporters, as some press accounts have indicated.

And let's excerpt the rest of Judy Miller's version of her July 12 exchange with Libby:

I told Mr.
Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others
about Mr. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words
"Victoria Wilson" with a box around it, another apparent reference to
Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.

I told Mr.
Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or
whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another
possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose
to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.

I also told the
grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written "Wilson" because my
memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr.
Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the
name Wilson. I told him I didn't know and didn't want to guess.

My notes of this
phone call show that Mr. Libby quickly turned to criticizing Mr.
Wilson's report on his mission to Niger. He said it was unclear whether
Mr. Wilson had spoken with any Niger officials who had dealt with
Iraq's trade representatives.

With the
understanding that I would attribute the information to an
administration official, Mr. Libby also sought to explain why Mr. Bush
included the disputed uranium allegation in his 2003 State of the Union
address, a sentence of 16 words that his administration would later
retract. Mr. Libby described it as the product of a simple
miscommunication between the White House and the C.I.A.

Ms. Miller might have called others about Ms. Plame; Ms. Miller might have run a false name past Libby to trick him into correcting her; and yet it is Libby that was "intensely focused on
the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA officer"? This is fantasy.

As to Mr. Waas overarching theme, it is that Mr. Libby was very careful and cautious with classified information; his implication is that Libby would only have divulged information about Ms. Plame if instructed to do so.

That would be especially compelling if Libby knew her status was classified. However, there is that pesky footnote from Fitzgerald, when he told the judges overseeing the Miller and Cooper subpoenas that "To date, we have no direct evidence that Libby knew or believed that Wilson's wife was engaged in covert work."

Troubling - it is very hard to defend Mr. Waas on this, since he surely knows better.

Katie Couric decries the lack of women in media by whining about the lack of women in Congress, and delivers a word usage that appears to be utterly wrong. Let's set the stage:

The White House invited all the network anchors, and some cable anchors, along with the Sunday political show hosts to a meeting with unnamed VERY senior administration officials.
(Obviously I know their names, but the agreement was that in order to
attend the meeting, we couldn’t reveal the people who spoke to us.)

...

And yet, the meeting was a little disconcerting as well. As I was
looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George
Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer,
Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far
we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some
female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the
“principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt.
Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.

I have the palpable feeling that Ms. Couric is using "jocular" to mean, well, "jock-ular" - a synonym for "macho", I infer. Or do women not make jokes and banter a bit? Dare we ask whether she realizes that "jocular" means "given to jesting: habitually jolly... or characterized by jesting"? Dare we ask whether she realizes that for many if not most of us English speakers, "jocular" has no sexual connotation at all?

Well, she'd have to be pretty thick to make that mistake. But then again, she would have to be pretty thick to continue with this:

The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make
tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for
womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up
only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly
recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been...but still not as
good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden
(forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women
as CEO’s.

What?!? At an Executive Branch briefing for the media Ms. Couric is ruminating about the under-representation of women in Congress? A hint - if Congress were 100% female and, beggaring belief, had a female speaker (oh, yeah...) her media briefing with Tim, George, Brit, Brian et al would still have had too many men. Can you guess why that is, Katie? Because there were neither Congressmen or Congress-chicks in attendance.

I am still attempting to absorb the news that the US has not yet achieved the high standard set by Rwanda.

NOTE TO SELF: Re-write Living Will. The clause that explains that watching televised golf for more than two hours shall be taken as conclusive evidence of brain death must be amended to included "or watching Katie Couric for more than two minutes".

And while Katie fretted about her skirt and waxed poetic about the
long, hard slog to shatter the glass ceiling in war-torn Fortune 500
boardrooms in tremendous strides of self-absorption, Michelle Malkin
put on body armor and walked around Baghdad with the US Army without
makeup or a single complaint. Which one is the feminist icon again?

Attorney General Gonzalez announced that the FISA Court would be taking over supervision of the controversial NSA warrantless surveillance program. Here is Times coverage and the text of his letter to Senators Leahy and Specter.

"Probable cause" seems to be a key point here, since it is noted in the first paragraph of the Gonzalez letter:

Mr. Gonzales told the committee’s chairman and ranking Republican that
the secret court issued orders on Jan. 10 authorizing the government to
monitor communications “into or out of the United States where there is
probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or
agent of Al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization.”

In a background briefing with reporters, Justice officials declined to
provide details about how the new program will work -- including
whether the surveillance court has issued a blanket order covering all
similar cases or whether it will issue individual orders on a
case-by-case basis. Authorities also refused to say how many court
orders are involved.

The officials said the new approach will offer the same benefits of
the NSA program, along with the advantage of judicial oversight.

"There
is no compromise to national security," one of the Justice officials
said. "The objectives of the program haven't changed, and the
capabilities of the intelligence agency to operate such a program
haven't changed as a result of these orders."

It's only January but the NY Times sends a big Valentine to I. Lewis Libby - he was an anti-Vietnam war activist, he writes, he memorizes poetry, he's an original Trekkie, he skis, his wife and best friends are Democrats, he's devoted to his kids, and he's basically a smart, wonderful guy.

As for Libby's memory, I had the feeling that -- regardless of the
reporter's intent -- the story will be a GOP talking point about how
the NYTimes did a hatchet job on Libby. Anyone who knows poetry by
heart or all 79 titles of Star Trek couldn't forget who said what when
about Joe Wilson's wife. Of course, I don't know if that's true. But it
may make for some empassioned discussion for a day or so about a
slanted, rather than "insightful," article.

I don't think that is what is going on. I don't have a big problem with the pedestrian explanation - the Times wanted a "Man bites dog" effort, since they could bat out a "Rosemary's Baby grows up and goes to Washington" profile of Libby in about seven minutes.

But let's not rule out a darker and more interesting motive! The Times, perhaps edified by the prospect of jail time for Judy Miller, editorialized in Feb 2005 about "the real possibility that the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, while an abuse of power, may not have violated any law". We can imagine they have not been happy with the court battles subsequently won by Fitzgerald that have reduced (clarified?) reporter's freedoms.

And beyond that, the Times has at least one, and as many as three, dogs in this fight. Ex-reporter Judy Miller will be called by the prosecution; columnist Nick Kristof and reporter David Sanger may be called by the defense.

Part of the deal that got Judy Miller out of jail and in front of the grand jury was that Fitzgerald would limit his questioning to her conversations with Libby. However, it is clear from her account that she had conversations with others about Ms. Plame. With a man's freedom at stake, will she be a bit more forthcoming about those contacts? And what will the jurors make of Fitzgerald's "investigation" if she names some exciting names?

Nick Kristof met with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson over breakfast in May 2003 and got his story then. Did he also get the idea that Ms. Wilson could vouch for major details of that story because she was with the CIA? Or did he later learn, in the course of working the story, about Wilson's wife - his "denial" in an Oct 2003 column is easily parsed and riddled with wiggle room.

Finally, David Sanger almost surely gave limited testimony about his contacts with Libby, but not others. Does he have a bombshell for the courtroom?

I have no idea, but the Times editors might. Let's say it is faintly possible that one or more of their reporters will deliver a Perry Mason moment that blows up the trial and leaves folks wondering, how did the Times manage to sit on that?

And if that moment comes, at least the Times will have warmed their readers to the notion that maybe the streets won't be safer with Libby in jail. Just speculating.